FT MEPDE 
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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 

Chap!T.Z3 Copyright No, 

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 




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An Eventful Night 





An Eventful Night 

A Comedy of a Western 
Mining Town 



Clara Parker 



Doubleday & McClure Co. 
New York 1900 

4 .. . j 


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TWO Copies heceivejd. 

Library of CoBgprMn^ 

OfflOQ 0 f lln 

MAR 1 4 1900 

B»9lat|ir of Copyrl^bt«r 

56759 


Copyright, 1897, by 
S. S. McCLUKE CO. 


Copyright, 1900, by 
DOUBLEDAY & McCLURE CO. 



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An Eventful Night 


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An Eventful Night 


I am not going to lead up to my story 
gracefully, for when you have learned that 
my name is George Manning and that I 
was, at the time the thing happened, visit- 
ing my married sister in one of the liveli- 
est, roughest, and most altogether corrupt 
mining towns to which a lady of culture was 
ever carried by an adoring husband, you 
know all that it is needful you should know 
of me, prior to my little hurst of notoriety. 

My sister was very proud of me — whether 
justly or unjustly I am not prepared to say 
— and immediately on my arrival began 
flooding her house with all the single ladies 
for miles around, in the hope, I was well 
aware, that some one of the undeniably 
fine creatures would tempt me to desert 
my business in the East and set up for a 
1 


An Eventful Night 


family man on some of the ranches or in 
some of the mines which in the form of 
dowries hung about the persons of these 
already alluring young things. 

I had no intention of following out her 
secret desires, but I had not the slightest 
objection to making myself as agreeable 
as nature would permit; and all went 
smoothly until one day I awoke to the fact 
that a severe pain was racking at my lower 
jaw, which, finding itself unable to contain 
this pain within ordinary limits, had 
swelled itself up to a degree shocking to 
behold. As kind-hearted a woman as ever 
lived, my sister was perfectly brutal in her 
comments on my appearance, and made it 
so plain that she expected me to keep out 
of sight of the numerous callers with which 
her house was always thronged, that I 
skulked about all that day like a forlorn 
leper, a large bandage about my head and 
a very displeasing ointment imparting a 
pungent odour to my entire person. 

Night came, and I was no better. My 
sister became desperate. There was noth- 
2 


An Eventful Night 

ing for it— I must be lanced. The pain 
had stopped by this time, and I pleaded de- 
lay, but was scornfully refused. I hinted 
at rebellion, and then my fears were meanly 
played upon. Who could tell but that my 
disorder might be some deep-seated affec- 
tion of the bone ? I laughed softly at this, 
but was promptly frowned down. Dr. 
A must be seen. He knew every- 

thing. 

‘‘ Well, send for him, then! 

But no — he must not be sent for; he 
was in delicate health; I must go to him. 

What! In this high wind. I was in 
delicate health myself ! 

Nonsense. There was nothing the mat- 
ter with me. 

Then why go for a doctor ? 

I will not write down all my pitiful 
efforts at logic with a woman, and that 
woman a sister. I went, of course — an 
unsightly mass of shawls in a close car- 
riage; and after a long drive, during which 
I went to sleep, I was admitted into the 
presence of the most disagreeable man I 
3 


An Eventful Night 


ever met — none other than the great doc- 
tor himself, who was eating what smelled 
like very poor soup out of a large bowl, 
and who insulted me the moment I ex- 
plained my business. I was pitifully ser- 
vile, but to no purpose. I abused myself 
in bitter terms; I jeered at my own folly 
in supposing my case worthy of his notice : 
but I could not soften his judgment by a 
hair’s breadth. I meanly laid my indig- 
nity at my sister’s door, and told him as 
mirthfully as possible that she had feared 
some trouble with the bone. For answer 
he drove a lancet in my swollen jaw to its 
very hilt, and stopped my speech with my 
own blood. 

I could have shrieked aloud, but for the 
contempt in his eye; and then he called 
my trouble a ‘^gum-boil,” as the most 
atrocious thing he could lay his tongue to ; 
and while the cold sweat of pain was dry- 
ing on me, I handed him a large bill, from 
which I got no change. 

I should have been gone in a moment, 
and what did happen never would have 
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An Eventful Night 


happened, but my bandages kept me. 
While I stood in the cold hall fumbling 
with them, another patient, or at least an- 
other caller, entered. Not a meek, de- 
jected figure this time, with his head tied 
up in shawls, but a great, aggressive crea- 
ture in a huge coat, with a heavy, stamping 
step, and a smell of new leather about him, 
which probably came from his long-wristed 
driving gloves. He paid no attention to 
me — indeed, he could scarcely have seen me, 
I stood so far back in the shade — but strode 
on into the presence of the doctor, leaving 
the door open and having a general air of 
hurry and impatience. 

It is all going down just as it happened, 
so I may as well confess that I was con- 
scious of a sudden vulgar curiosity as to 
the reception of my successor. 

“ Dr. A , I believe! exclaimed the 

newcomer in the loud, aggressive tone 
affected by the hack-driver and travelling 
showman, and then stopped — which was 
more than the doctor did, for he kept on 
with his soup, rattling the spoon against 
5 


An Eventful Night 


his false teeth at each mouthful with a vin- 
dictive, stabbing movement. ‘‘Well,” he 
snarled at length, setting down the empty 
bowl and fixing the man with a savage 
scowl, “what’s the matter with you? 
Have you got a gum-boil, too?” This 
last with contempt unutterable. This was 
too much ! Of course the newcomer knew 
nothing of me and my trouble, so was 
ignorant of the creature’s meaning; but 
remembering the pain of that boil, if I 
must so call it, I felt that it should have 
received more respectful treatment, and I 
was on the verge of doing something rash, 
when the doctor again surprised me. 

“Shut that door!” he screamed, but 
whether at me or my successor, I could 
not tell. Evidently the man thought that 
he was addressed, for muttering an excla- 
mation not strictly moral, he closed the 
door with a bang that made me wink. 

I came to myself at that, and a little 
ashamed of lurking there, I finished my 
bundling hastily, and withdrew with state- 
liness. My carriage was waiting for me 
6 


An Eventful Night 


just where I had left it, which should have 
surprised me, considering that I had told 
the man not to wait, as I felt inclined for 
some exercise after my day’s retirement. 
This, however, I failed to remember, only 
observing, as I climbed inside, that there 
was no one in the driver’s seat. Doubt- 
less he was a tippling animal, and had 
stepped across the way to that cosy little 
saloon I saw there. Another time I would 
not have grudged him his little fling, but 
I was growing decidedly ill-tempered, and 
meanly plotted how I should disconcert 
him on his return. 

It was a gratifying thought as I huddled 
myself upon the seat to wait his coming. 
I had been so ignominiously handled my- 
self, that the consciousness of the power I 
held over my sister’s hireling elevated me al- 
most to where I had stood in my own mind 
before the occurrence of this affair of the 
boil! Petty? Of course it was; naked 
human nature is a horrid thing to look at 
under the scourge of bodily afflictions. 

I had been sitting for some moments and 
7 


An Eventful Night 


was just getting warm and comfortable 
under the robes, when I heard the coach- 
man mount hurriedly to his seat. I began 
gathering myself to give him a surprise, 
when the carriage-door was flung open by 
a rude hand, and a tall, muffled figure 
bounded in like some captured animal 
forced behind the bars by a keeper’s lash. 

In my surprise I sat passive, so might 
or might not have been observed. Any- 
way, I got no greeting; and my informal 
friend was just settling himself into the 
seat opposite, when, muttering in a voice 
muffled by many wrappings, I’ve forgot- 
ten the other case,” he bounded to his 
feet, and reopening the door, framed his 
lips for a peevish call to the driver. At 
least, to be perfectly exact, that is what I 
think this intruder designed doing; but 
owing to circumstances I shall never 
know to an exact certainty, for at that 
moment there came a loud, impatient 
crack of the whip, the horses bounded for- 
ward into the night, while I — well, I was 
dazed and bewildered, my jaw was still 
8 


An Eventful Night 

racked with the pain of the late operation, 
an uncomfortable sensation of coagulated 
blood lay about my teeth, and when you 
add to this my injured self-love as well as 
my annoyance at the glaring insubordina- 
tion of the driver, it would seem to me 
there was sufficient excuse for what fol- 
lowed. It is true, and I have never de- 
nied it, that the check-strap was at that 
moment wrthin easy reach of my hand; 
and bloodless critics now claim that reason 
demanded I should pull it, stop the car- 
riage, denounce the coachman, confront 
the intruder, and otherwise air the various 
items of the mystery in which I thought 
myself involved ; but I scorn their logic. 

As I have before explained, the city in 
which my sister lived was in the ferment- 
ing state of growth. It was gorged with 
picked-up gold, and red-handed with strife 
as to who should own it. I am a full- 
blooded person myself, and the suspicion 
that I was being made the victim of some 
rascality acted on me like a pleasing in- 
toxicant. All seemed then explained; the 
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An Eventful Night 


temporary absence of the coachman from 
his box, the insolent freedom of the in- 
truder — all pointed as clear as noonday 
down the road to dark suspicion. Acting 
on my first impulse, I sprang like a 
wounded hyaena across the carriage, and 
had my companion by the throat, nor did 
I relax my grip upon the scrawny thing 
until the sudden fiash of a street light re- 
vealed to me in the horror-stricken face 
peering at me above my rigid knuckles the 

ill-favoured features of Dr. A , now 

twined about and darkly framed by a 
huge muffler, scarcely less in dimensions 
than the one twisted about my swollen 
jaw. 

It was like a sudden thunder-clap, and 
though, when you considered the man’s 
disposition and his standing in society, my 
throttling him like a common thief was an 
act for which there would be no pardon 
granted, yet it was my plain duty to let 
go and apologize. I did let go, but with 
what sickening results I hardly have the 
courage to record. 


10 


An Eventful Night 


Kemember, please, that the carriage- 

door was still open, that Dr. A was 

already half-way out, and that the horses 
were going at full speed. A sudden jerk 
was all that was needed — and the jerk 
came. For one instant the unfortunate 
man toppled where he stood, while his 
eyes glared into mine with rage and fear, 
and his lean throat struggled hoarsely with 
a sound; and with a little, involuntary 
shriek, I saw him make a dreadful plunge, 
stand fairly upright on his head and shoul- 
ders, and collapse in a mashed, sickening 
fashion into the shallow gutter. 

Now, indeed, the carriage should have 
been stopped, and no further trifling about 
it; but a strange stupidity crept over me 
as I stood craning my head back to the 
spot we were fast leaving in our wake, un- 
til a second flash of light revealed a fact to 
me which brought me down upon the car- 
riage seat, very mild and limp, my mind 
filled with serious speculations about the 
awkwardness of the scrape I had got my- 
self into. 


11 


An Eventful Night 


I was not in my sister’s carriage — and 
more, there now floated before me the dis- 
tinct remembrance of having dismissed the 
coachman at the doctor’s door. Yes,” 
ran on my mind in morbid detail, I had 
dismissed my driver, had sought out the 
great man with my sordid complaint, had 
lingered in his passage-way, had hidden 
in his carriage, had flown at him like an 
avenging tiger-cat, and now he lay a dead 
man by the roadside, with heaven knows 
how many witnesses to our death-struggle, 
in full tilt to set the legal bloodhounds on 
my trail. And there was my coachman 
still at large with his tale to tell, and there 
was the possibility of last words which my 
victim might falter forth upon some offi- 
cial breast, stamping me as his assailant. ” 
That the man was dead seemed my only 
hope, and I sat and nursed my horrid 
thought until my mind was a charnel- 
house of ghastly speculation. How far 
removed I seemed from the peaceful sor- 
rows of yesterday, and how I cursed my 
stupid forgetfulness about the carriage and 
13 


An Eventfui Night 

my unseemly haste to throttle an innocent 
man on whose privacy I had intruded ! 

In the meantime the carriage sped on, 
on, and on, faster and yet faster, and still 
I sat there dull and lumpish, trying to 
form my vapid plans as to what I should 
do when it should stop. Then I think 
that the real folly of my actions began, for 
it occurred to me that, after all, there 
would not be so much to startle the driver. 

Dr. A and I were much the same 

height; we both happened to be much 
bundled about the head; what was there 
to prevent my alighting without suspicion, 
and then watch my chance to cut and 
run, leaving the charge of sudden madness 

to rest on the memory of Dr. A , when 

his corpse should be discovered by the 
roadside ? That I battled with these 
thoughts I well remember, but their fas- 
cination grew upon me, and I kept return- 
ing to them at intervals until my whole 
line of action, despite the efforts of my 
reason, was clearly mapped out before me. 

Gradually, too, the whole thing grew 
13 


An Eventful Night 

upon me as funny and theatrical, and 
even the certainty which possessed me 
that the dead body of that unpleasant 
doctor still lay by the roadside could not 
hinder me from a certain awful relish in 
it. In vain did I force myself to dwell on 
the shocking figure he must cut; but all 
that guilt and shame could do for me, in 
the state of mind I then endured, was to 
force from me a general forgiveness of his 
offensive treatment of me. That done, 
my moral sense would budge no further. 

And now another disquiet laid hold 
upon me. It was becoming painfully evi- 
dent that we must have long since passed 
beyond the limits of the city. No lights 
now fiashed in at the carriage windows; 
no opposing roll of wheels deadened the 
sound of our vehicle as it rattled over the 
frozen ground, and as my mind glanced 
about ’midst the tales of rural bloodshed- 
ding I had heard, of masked men .rising 
like conjurers’ puppets before the belated 
traveller, of ill-gotten gains that had been 
made to vanish like a vision, I began con- 
14 


An Eventful Night 

structing headlines for the next day’s issue 
in which the name of George Manning was 
conspicuous. 

There was no getting out unless I chose 
the certain death of a broken neck to the 
more shadowy horrors with which I was 
threatened. Suddenly, it seemed, we be- 
gan going sheer up. Five, ten, fifteen 
minutes, and still we climbed, until my 
faculties became absorbed in the mere act 
of holding on. A whiteness, as of the 
snow which I knew still lingered among 
the mountains, threw a glare into the 
pitchy darkness of the night. The horses 
slipped, the driver swore, and I hung on, 
while the wind struck mournful chords on 
the branches of the lonely pines. ‘‘The 
man is mad,” I gasped, as I dug my nails 
into things about me. “ Is mad, is mad,” 
moaned the rising wind ; but who was mad 
it did not tell. Perhaps I, perhaps the 
driver. Heavens, what a lurch! And 
now the carriage has stopped, and with it 
my heart had stopped also. My nerves, 
played on by the mournful wind and the 
15 


An Eventful Night 


pitchy night, are tingling like a child’s ; 
hut there is no escape ! A glare of light 
bursts in through the carriage door, and I 
find myself groping for the medicine chest 
left upon the seat by Dr. A . 

Things could not have turned out worse 
for me. I had made certain in my own 
mind that the carriage would stop at some 
entrance remote from the house, and that, 
while the driver’s interest was centred on 
his horses, there would be ample time for 
me to take wing. Imagine, then, my 
panic when, directly following the burst 
of light, a voice, not that of the driver — 
with which I had grown familiar as he 
cursed his beasts up the mountain side — 
but smoother, one trained into a social 
key, exclaimed eagerly, ‘‘ So you are here 
at last, doctor! We have been looking for 
you impatiently. She seems to be grow- 
ing worse rather than better.” 

“She!” I could have sunk to the 
earth. My patient then was a woman. I 
had not thought of this possibility. My 
soul was piteous with guilt. The plight 
16 


An Eventful Night 

of the expectant patient had never before 
entered my head. Suppose some victim 
of acute neuralgia, some delicate female, 
was waiting in hysterical misery for a 
friendly dose of morphine; or some case 
of chronic heart failure lay, cold and livid, 
in dire need of one of the mystic drugs 
contained in the medicine chest I grasped 
so limply ! 

Well, I was desperate, there was no help 
for me. Heaven send the woman might 
he old and ugly, with no malady in reach 
of earthly help! In despair I climbed 
from the carriage, to find myself standing 
in a glare of light before a long, rough 
building perched like an eagle’s nest upon 
the barren, desolate spot, while behind me 
lay the blackness, the gulf-like abyss from 
which we had crawled. 

A dark, handsome man of some forty or 
fifty was peering eagerly into my face, and 
the necessity for self-control suddenly pre- 
sented itself to me with startling force. 
In my youth I had been much given to 
parlor theatricals, and through all the con- 
2 17 


An Eventful Night 


fusion of that moment those early days of 
training came back to me like the whisper- 
ing of angel voices. The voice of the ac- 
cepted stage doctor in my day had been 
bluff, though pleasant — my voice should 
be bluff, though pleasant. 

‘‘A rough ride,” I said, huddling my 
coat about me as in fancy I moved up and 
down before the footlights with an easy 
stage stride. “We have been the deuce 
of a time getting here.” 

“ I hope you are not suffering from the 
cold,” exclaimed my companion politely, 
as he moved up the steps of the building 
before me. “ You seem heavily bundled.” 

“ I got mixed up with a fool of a den- 
tist,” I retorted, and then I swore dis- 
creetly. It would not do to be too nice in 
my language. Able old men rarely are. 

My companion murmured polite sym- 
pathy over the distress, and laughed in 
gentle appreciation of my rugged dis- 
pleasure. “ Our teeth are sad burdens all 
through life,” he said, as he conducted 
me into a large, well-warmed, but badly 
18 


An Eventful Night 

lighted apartment. ‘‘We weep, and we 
swell, and we go rickety and altogether 
wrong until we get them, but no sooner 
are they through than they commence again 
to play the very deuce and all with us.” 

Although attending me with courtesy, I 
could see that he was filled with a restless 
impatience which could hardly brook the 
necessary removing of my coat and rear- 
rangement of my bandages, which, you 
may be sure, I took good care not to re- 
move from my face, and. which, swelled as 
I was about my only visible eye, must have 
effectually disguised me from my own 
mother. 

‘‘ When you are quite warm we will go 
upstairs,” he said grudgingly, as I 
stretched my stiff hands towards the fire ; 
but I would not take the hint to hurry, 
for had the scaffold and halter been before 
me, I could not have felt much greater 
reluctance to go forth and meet them. 

My surroundings were, as I expected, 
decidedly suspicious. Though the items 
which made up my evidence were innocent 
19 


An Eventful Night 


enough individually, yet, looked at collec- 
tively, they could not but appear peculiar, 
seen in that country, at that hour of night, 
and at that distance from anything like 
civilized restrictions. In the first place, 
the entire incongruity of the man himself 
with his surroundings was something that 
demanded explanation ; for here in a place 
which would naturally suggest to your 
mind a host either of the strictest hermit 
type, shaggy of hair and eloquent of a 
gloomy past, or a toil-stained miner 
wedded to his pipe and glass, I found a 
man of town speech, one lately from the 
hands of a thoughtful tailor, and bringing 
with him into that wilderness all the trou- 
blesome necessities of civilized life; for 
example, the soft rug fiung down before 
the glowing grate, the books and papers 
tossed everywhere about, and, above all, 
the snowy whiteness of exquisite table 
linen showing upon some shabby old ma- 
hogany in the room beyond. 

All these marked the gentleman of taste. 
Then why the comparative barbarity of his 
20 


An Eventful Night 

retirement, why the unusual ornamenta- 
tion of pistols upon his mantel shelf, why 
his haste and embarrassment, and why the 
man-eating look of his great bloodhound, 
that kept privately testing the sharpness 
of his yellow fangs on the legs of my 
trousers ? 

You may suppose that I did not remain 
suspiciously silent nor show myself offen- 
sively curious as I noted all these little 
facts. No. Again my private theatricals 
came to my aid. In the days gone by I 
had been so accustomed to carrying on 
long monologues within three feet of the 
stage villain, and keeping accurate watch 
of the cue at which he was to lay me un- 
conscious at his feet, while, to the audi- 
ence, I appeared perfectly blind to his 
existence, that at that trying time I was 
enabled to make all my observations and 
silently kick the ugly brute which had 
marked me as suspicious, without drawing 
down upon my head anything like a doubt- 
ful scrutiny from the black, restless eyes 
of my mysterious entertainer. 

21 


An Eventful Night 


He gave me his name as Brown,” 
which was so glaringly commonplace that 
I privately rejected it, and could only be 
thankful that, in his preoccupation, he 
paid no heed to mine. I seemed to be a 
medical man to him, and nothing else. 
When I could make no further excuse for 
delay we went out through a windy pas- 
sage, and began mounting some stairs; 
scandalous stairs they were, too, crooked 
and steep, and so badly lighted I came 
near raking down my companion in a gen- 
eral crash before I grew accustomed to the 
semi-darkness. He bore with me pa- 
tiently, however. “We are dreadfully 
primitive here,” he said lightly; “but as 
yet electricity has only climbed the moun- 
tain in its natural state.” 

As he spoke we reached an upper hall 
where everything was in total darkness, 
and when I paused, half-expecting the 
cold muzzle of a revolver to be clapped 
against my head, he took me gently by 
the arm, and led me like a shambling 
dotard down its winding length, nor 
22 


An Eventful Night 

seemed to notice how I dragged my feet 
cautiously along the carpeted way and dug 
in my heels at each fresh turn, so full was 
I of remembered tales of yawning pits into 
which victims, such as I, were made to 
fall. Some of these pits had been lined 
with naked blades, and I seemed to feel 
their sharp edges spearing at my joints. 
It was with a gasp of relief I paused with 
my guide at the extreme end of the pas- 
sage, where, after a clicking sound which 
I could have sworn was the turn of a key 
in the lock, he swung a door open before 
me, and I was gently pushed into the 
apartment of my patient. 

While I was down-stairs in the presence 
of my dark-browed companion and his 
evil-looking animal, with the combative 
thrill of suspected danger tingling through 
my veins, I wouldn’t have imagined that 
I could ever feel the skulking criminal I 
did when I at length realized that I was 
actually standing in the apartment of some 
suffering woman, in no licensed character, 
with no power to alleviate her sufferings, 
23 


An Eventful Night 


merely there as a frivolous adventurer, 
though, it may be conceded, an unfortu- 
nate one. Any male relative would have 
been justified, could I have been un- 
masked, in then and there pitching me 
bodily from the window. Indeed, at that 
moment, I think I should have blessed 
the avenging foot which should have re- 
moved me from the scene of my confusion; 
and yet had any one searched my heart 
as I dragged my heels heavily behind me 
across the threshold, he would have found 
it so filled with shame and contrition, so 
abounding in respectful compassion, that, 
had he been a human being, he would 
have been more inclined to take me by the 
hand and lead me forth like a pitying 
elder brother. 

A small white bed stood in one corner, 
draped about with some pinkish stuff, just 
what I could not tell, for I had not the 
temerity to more than glance in that direc- 
tion, and when a tall, portly woman rose 
slowly from one of the dark corners and 
confronted me, I should certainly have sunk 
34 


An Eventful Night 

grovelling at her feet, had she so much as 
pointed a finger of suspicion at me. 

‘‘How is she now, Mrs. Hoskins? 
Still unconscious? ” asked my companion 
shortly. He seemed filled with a restless 
impatience, and looked at the woman as 
though much inclined to leap at her throat 
and drag the words from her, without wait- 
ing for the process of articulation. 

From the look she gave him I gathered 
that she, too, felt that time was grudged 
her, but she was of a rambling habit of 
thought, and could not concentrate, what- 
ever the need. “ She’s been a-laying much 
as you see her, sir; but I give her them 
drops,” she said nervously. “ That’s four 
she’s had since twelve, counting — but no, 
I forgot — she heaved them first into the 
wash-bowl.” 

Her employer eyed her until she shifted 
uneasily to another foot. “ She don’t take 
the hot milk as I could wish,” she ran on, 
as though hoping to strike something pro- 
pitious, but was cut short by a stern ges- 
ture. 


25 


An Eventful Night 


‘‘The creature fairly drips with talk,” 
my host muttered irritably. 

“ Would the doctor like to see the young 
lady ? ” asked the nurse amiably, while at 
the fatal word “young ” I came well-nigh 
leaping into the air, and a species of death 
damps broke out all over me. 

“It’s very probable he would,” came 
dimly to my failing senses. “ That was 
my main object in sending for him.” 

Dead to irony, Mrs. Hoskins took this 
able stab in good part, and with a loose 
motion of her thumb beckoned me to fol- 
low her as she approached the dainty white 
bed. For a full moment, as it seemed, I 
stood in hang-dog uncertainty, and then, 
as the woman glanced back in surprise, I 
followed her, with a sinking at my heart 
which seemed really dangerous to its 
safety. For a long time, as it seemed, I 
walked and walked. Then a curtain 
moved aside; some one held up a smoky 
lamp at a better angle, and I saw — I shall 
never forget it — I saw before me one of 
the most charming women I had ever be- 
26 


An Eventful Night 

held or have ever since beheld. I do not 
say that she was pretty; I did not get that 
far. I passed the analytical stage at a sin- 
gle bound. But I know she was charm- 
ing, with her crisp, dark hair curling 
about her flushed cheeks, her square little 
chin surmounted with scarlet lips and the 
sauciest little nose that ever defied human- 
ity in general. How she was dressed I 
cannot say, only that it was in something 
pink, much the colour of the bed hang- 
ings, and I think it was made up baggy, 
though that isn’t exactly the word for it 
either. Her eyes were closed, for which 
I was humbly grateful, for had she looked 
at me during those first dreadful moments, 
she must have read me like an open book. 

Somebody shoved a chair under me, and 
I sat down gratefully, for my knees were 
shaking beneath me; and then, feeling 
that the eyes of both Brown and Mrs. 
Hoskins were upon me, I realized that I 
must immediately do something to sustain 
my professional r61e. I must question 
them, that was plain; but what to ask! 

87 


An Eventful Night 


On the rare occasion when I had been in- 
disposed, back in my boyhood days, it had 
always been an overloaded stomach that 
had played havoc with me, and it was 
really the only part of the human anatomy 
I felt up on; but was I to hint at indiges- 
tion with this fairy-like creature before 
me? Never! It was not to be thought 
of. Her nerves ? Happy thought ! What 
could be a safer topic than the nerves of 
any lady? But for all that, my voice 
sounded hoarse with embarrassment, and 
I approached the subject with a timid deli- 
cacy that would have admitted me, with- 
out a chaperon, into the very heart of 
any nunnery extant. 

“ Has — has the young lady exhibited any 
degree of nervous excitement within the 
last few days ? ” I faltered. “Not that I 
wish to intrude ” — but here, fortunately, 
the loquacious Hoskins cut me short before 
the miserable ending of my speech had 
fairly escaped my traitor lips. 

“She had been dreadful oneasy like,” 
she broke forth loosely, her eye rolling ner- 
39 


An Eventful Night 

vously at Brown, who was standing, grim 
and statuesque, beside us. ‘‘But young 
wimmen is that way, you know, mostly; 
it’s the nater of them. I was given to 

them spells myself some, before ” 

“ The doctor will attend to your symp- 
toms later on, Mrs. Hoskins,” broke in 
Brown frostily. ‘ ‘ Please favour my niece’s 
case with your entire attention at present.” 

“And her appetite?” I asked hastily. 
“ Has it been quite normal, or has she 
shown caprice in that also ? ” 

I was getting quite proud of my cross- 
examination, and a growing confidence 
lent me some majesty of bearing. It was 
evident that not the faintest suspicion of 
fraud had been as yet roused in the mind 
of either Brown or Mrs. Hoskins. 

“ She never do eat as one might call 
heavy,” exclaimed the latter, poking at 
the pillows about the young lady’s head 
with so rough a hand that I could scarcely 
restrain the impulse to reach out and drag 
her back. “ Some days she picks at things 
quite hearty, and then she won’t have none 
29 


An Eventful Night 


of ’em, and I am at a great to do to find a 
thing as she will have brought a-nigh her.” 

‘‘ All that is easily accounted for,” broke 
in Brown harshly, ‘‘ by explaining to the 
doctor that she is a very high-spirited, wil- 
ful young lady. I should not have paid 
the slightest attention to all of those affec- 
tations, but it is this feverish stupor which 
has alarmed me. I have made every effort 
to rouse her, and I begin to think that it 
is genuine.” 

‘‘ How long has it lasted ? ” I asked, my 
voice coming very cold and hard through 
shut teeth ; for, foolish though I might be, 
the suspicion that those efforts had not 
been of the gentlest took possession of me. 

‘‘Off and on, for a day past,” broke 
out Mrs. Hoskins as though choking for 
speech. “ Yesterday she took, all at once, 
carrying on about pains in her spine and 
acrost her; then she said her head went 
giddy on her, and from that she took a fit 
of hysterics quite sudden, and a lively 
time I had of it I can tell you. What 
with ” 


30 


An Eventful Night 


‘^Your troubles will wait, Mrs. Hos- 
kins,” broke in Brown again, to whom 
her garrulity seemed perfectly intolerable. 

Does she seem feverish to you. Doctor ? ” 

It had come ! For several moments past 
my eyes had been wandering to a slender 
white hand dropped softly upon the silken 
coverlet, and now I must touch that hand, 
must approach near to my supposed pa- 
tient, though she lay in appealing, help- 
less maidenhood before me, and I — I had 
no right there. There was nothing for it, 
however, but to go through with the farce 
I had begun. Very cautiously I rose, and, 
as I am a large person and the bed was a 
little alfair, when I leaned down over it, 
all the time murmuring prayers for my 
soul’s sake, I completely obscured its occu- 
pant from those behind me. Timidly and 
reverently I touched the small hand — 
touched and closed my strong fingers about 
it, with a clinging protection in the clasp 
I could not control, for I am a son of 
Adam. To my utter undoing, the eyes, 
which had before remained closed, swiftly 
31 


An Eventful Night 


and cautiously opened, large and black, 
upon me. One hasty look of entreaty and 
appeal they sent down straight into my 
soul, while the fingers I had well-nigh 
dropped pressed something into mine. 
The eyes closed again, and I, with very 
little breath left in my body, stood gaping 
vacantly before me. 

It seems scarcely credible to me now, 
that so strange a thing could happen, and 
that my first vivid thought after a fiash of 
delight at the beauty of the lady’s eyes 
should be a bitter rage at those dreadful 
bandages of mine. All other considera- 
tions — the probable insanity of the pa- 
tient, the wonder as to what she had 
forced upon me — were, for the moment, 
absorbed in frivolous regret that such eyes 
should have taken their first look at me 
whilst a silk handkerchief was knotted 
about my head, and my right eye glared 
upon her, swollen, infiamed, and expres- 
sionless. My poor vanity! Again it bent 
beneath a heavy load to bear, and I had 
no leisure in which to bind up its wounds. 

32 


An Eventful Night 

The situation was growing frightful. 

Well ? ” asked Brown curtly at my el- 
bow, and with a start I drew back and 
faced him. “ Is there a table conve- 
nient?” I asked sharply, and then, as a 
sop to the impatience which I saw racked 
him, I explained condescendingly, ‘‘as I 
must prepare her a soothing draught. 
Her fever is running pretty high.” 

With that I snatched up the medicine 
case, which seemed to follow me about 
without any intelligent effort on my part, 
and made over to the corner of the room 
to which slow-footed Hoskins had ambled 
with a second lamp. 

Evidently boiling with irritation. Brown 
flung himself into a chair beside the bed, 
so that, after ridding myself of the woman 
by sending her for a glass of water, I was 
able to swiftly and stealthily examine the 
small object which I still held just as my 
Angers had closed over it. That it was a 
piece of paper my sense of touch had al- 
ready told me; but that it was a small, torn 
sheet of note-paper, covered with delicate 
3 33 


An Eventful Night 


■writing done in pencil I could not have 
dreamed, and yet such it was. Covertly 
I began to examine this writing, so filled 
with girlish twirls and dashes as to present 
a pretty, but bewildering, outlook to a 
business eye, in the meantime keeping my 
back turned squarely upon Brown, who 
sat like some huge watchful spider beside 
the dainty white bed, and holding the 
paper where I might, at a second’s notice, 
crush it inside the medicine chest with 
which I was apparently fumbling. The 
letter began at once, without preamble: 
‘‘You doubtless have daughters of your 
own ” — I stopped abruptly, feeling dis- 
tinctly annoyed; but remembering the 
writer could not possibly have seen me be- 
fore commencing her letter, I continued 
my reading with growing excitement — 
“and will know how to feel for a poor 
girl, utterly in the power of a horrid, 
mercenary man. I don’t know what he 
has told you about me, but I know it isn’t 
true. There is not a single thing the mat- 
ter with me, but I took some stuff for colds 
34 


An Eventful Night 


I found in a bottle to make something hap- 
pen to me, so that tliey could send for a 
doctor. For I know doctors have to be 
respectable. It gave me a kind of fever- 
ish look, and that’s all. Now please, help 
me away from this place to-night, this very 
night, without letting anybody know, for 
I can’t stand it *ny longer. I must stop 
now, for Mrs. Hoskins is coming. 

“ P. S. — The dog is kept under my win- 
dow; and oh, yes, I can’t trust Mrs. H. 

‘‘ Distractedly.” 

But there the letter ended. No name 
was given, though to sign one had evi- 
dently been the intention of the writer. 
And with barely enough sense left me to 
thrust the paper out of sight, I sat in help- 
less bewilderment until touched heavily on 
the shoulder by Mrs. Hoskins, bearing in 
her hand the water I had sent for and a 
spoon. 

When Brown saw that I had been inter- 
rupted, he, too, came to my side, and the 
pair grouped themselves about me, and 
stared at me, expecting, and with reason, 
35 


An Eventful Night 


that, now I had been given leisure for 
thought, lucid ideas must begin to flow 
from me, while, in reality, had I been 
tapped for speech at that moment, I must 
have babbled forth mere scraps of the per- 
plexing chaos with which my mind was 
reeling. 

Was the girl insane ? Was it my duty 
to hand over the little, crumpled, confiding 
note to the stern dark man beside me? 
Never! Whether the girl was insane or 
not, that note was mine. If insanity had 
been its inspiration, some reverent hand 
must deal with its own folly. If not in- 
sane — what then was expected of me? 
Why was I warned against the dog be- 
neath her window ? Could it be that she 
actually meditated a theatrical flight ? If 
so, where were the needed ladders ? What 
was to be done with the dog ? 

‘‘ And how do you find her, sir ? ” broke 
in Mrs. Hoskins cheerfully. ‘‘ Pretty bad, 
ain’t she? I had a niece once that was 
took the same way, and we was upwards of 
three days a-gitting her to sense things. 

36 


An Eventful Night 

If she would only take a little nateral sleep, 
now.” 

Her words came to me like an inspira- 
tion. “ Blessed be thy wagging tongue, 
Hoskins; oh, long may it wave!” went 
up my mental shout, while outwardly I 
said a few grave things about ‘‘nerves” 
and “mental pressure,” which seemed to 
hit the mark somehow, for my listeners did 
not jeer me, but, on the contrary, looked 
reasonably impressed. 

“To speak candidly,” I exclaimed 
boldly, while I was groping for words as 
though grappling with a foreign tongue, 
“I fear congestion of the nerve centres, 
but I can’t be sure. There is nothing 
more illusive than these symptoms. How- 
ever, I shall give her a quieting powder, 
and in three or four hours I shall be able 
to tell exactly how much we have to fear.” 

My proposal, which involved a long stay 
at the house, was not pleasing — that much I 
could gather from the frown upon Brown’s 
dark face, but it excited no suspicion, and 
with a faint gleam of hope glowing at my 
37 


An Eventful Night 

heart I took the water which Mrs. Hoskins 
was still holding, and after pouring out 
half of it with a great show of caution, 
managed, while apparently mixing it with 
the contents of a small black bottle which 
smelled like varnish, to drop into it half a 
chocolate cream which I deftly extracted 
from a bon-bon dish on the table at which 
I was working. Indeed, I felt rather 
shocked at the light-fingered dexterity I 
suddenly developed ; it seemed to indicate 
an aptitude for questionable practices, any- 
thing but encouraging to contemplate. 

They seemed to expect that I would ad- 
minister my own medicine, but after cov- 
ertly rinsing the candy about as long as 
I dared, in my guilty effort to dissolve it 
and colour the water a respectable brown, 
I handed the glass sternly to Mrs. Hos- 
kins. I had no right to touch the impul- 
sive girl who had thrown herself on my 
honor, under the false impression that I 
must be some peaceful old fellow, with 
marriageable daughters and all that, 
though how she could have expected any 
38 


An Eventful Night 

such antiquated party to climb about 
through windows and toy with blood- 
hounds I could not, nor cannot yet, con- 
ceive. However, her innocent blunders 
had nothing to do with my plain course 
of duty, so I looked on with what grace I 
might while the clumsy Hoskins lifted 
upon her arm the slender figure, and 
forced my harmless dose between the scar- 
let lips, devoutly praying the while that 
the candy had all dissolved. 

Very neatly did the patient do her part. 
Not even a professional artist could have 
put to shame her restless impatience, the 
drowsy opening of her eyes, and their soft 
closing. 

“We must have the room perfectly quiet 
now,” I said. “Mr. Brown, would it be 
possible for me to have the use of a room 
next to this for an hour or so? The 
trouble with my tooth has used me up 
badly; but what can I expect? When 
one chooses the life of a physician he 
chooses a dog’s life, let him be clever as 
he will. And then look at the thanks he 


89 


An Eventful Night 


gets. Let him drag a man out of his 
grave-clothes, and it’s Providence that gets 
the credit, but let the man die, and how 
quickly Providence is let off scot free.” 

‘‘And yet a doctor’s fee is not a bad 
thing to have in one’s pocket, I imagine,” 
half-laughed, half-sneered my companion. 
“But come below with me, and we will 
have them set us out some lunch.” 

As may be imagined, all this talk had 
not been carried on in the sick-room. 
Gradually we had drifted out into the 
hall, and stood there lighted dimly by a 
lamp which Mrs. Hoskins carried. Of 
course I knew I must not go below, though 
the suggestion of lunch was tempting in- 
deed ; so I still held to my ungracious blus- 
ter. “You are very kind,” I said severely. 
“ But I must get my boots off and cover up 
warm. We physicians need some care, 
though our patients seem to doubt it. 
However,” I added more graciously, “I 
might pick at a little cold meat, if you 
would send it up. That and a glass of 
wine wouldn’t be at all bad.” 


40 


An Eventful Night 


‘‘Yon shall have them immediately,” 
said Brown. “But let us say a bottle of 
wine instead of a glass; and, by the way, 
sir, do you know that I have neglected to 
get your name? How very strange you 
musf think me,” and he paused, while his 
foot was actually raised to go and leave me 
in peace, to send that fatal broadside back 
into my shaky breastworks. 

What under heavens was I to say ? What 
did I know of his knowledge of the people 
in the city, where I was almost a total 
stranger ? 

“Well, well,” I exclaimed, with a hol- 
low laugh, “ this is droll certainly, but I 
took it for granted that your servant had 
explained.” 

“I have not seen him,” was the short 
reply, and Hoskins, moving forward at 
that moment, I stood revealed to the sharp 
eyes of my host in all the glare of light 
which the small lamp could boast. 

“I am Dr. A , of whom you have 

perhaps heard,” I said boldly, setting fire 
to my ships with an unfaltering hand. 

41 


An Eventful Night 

‘‘ I supposed that you had sent directly to 
me.” 

‘‘lam something of a stranger here,” 
was the evasive reply, and with a long look 
at me he was gone, leaving me in a state 
of feverish uncertainty as to whether I was 
unmasked or not. 

Gladly now would I have entered the 
sick-room alone, on some pretext or an- 
other, in hopes of a last word of explana- 
tion, but the slow-pacing Hoskins was ever 
at my heels, and to all my suggestions that 
the young lady should be left entirely 
alone, and that Hoskins herself might take 
some sleep while I kept watch, she brought 
forth the same rambling argument. “A 
quilt in a chair, and me in it, couldn’t be 
in any ways disturbing to one more accus- 
tomed to company than to be without,” she 
exclaimed amiably, until I gave up, fairly 
worn out. 

I took possession of the room assigned to 
me as soon as a lamp, a fire, and a neatly 
set lunch- table had made it ready. Once 
alone inside that room, the door shut on 
42 


An Eventful Night 

all intruders, and brought before the bar 
of sober judgment, I felt that a strait- 
jacket was all I lacked for a fully equipped 
madman. Yet condemn my folly as I 
would, I felt no desire to retreat. Even 
then I might have crept down-stairs, on 
some pretext or other, have slunk from the 
house, and made off without much chance 
of detection. But there I sat, turning over 
and over again every project that presented 
itself to my feverish fancy for carrying out 
the scheme of the crumpled note, which I 
now boldly consulted. 

Consult it as I would, however, there 
was nothing more to be got from it than 
that I was expected to help a perfect 
stranger, a young girl apparently confined 
to her bed with a serious illness, to rise 
from that bed and bolt through a second- 
story window, guarded by an ugly blood- 
hound, out into a freezing night, in the 
care of a single man, of so reckless a char- 
acter that he had, earlier in the evening, 
hidden himself in an innocent man’s car- 
riage, killed that helpless man, taken his 
43 


An Eventful Night 


belongings, and was now foisting himself 
upon her notice under an assumed name. 
A black outlook, I was forced to admit, and 
don’t mistake me by imagining I made 
light of the painful circumstances. I de- 
plored them deeply, but what would you 
have had ? 

Had the lady been plain, reason might 
have spoken with a louder voice, or, at 
least, its faint piping have been listened 
to; but as it was, I merely decided by the 
time my lunch was finished that, if any- 
thing was to be done, I must immediately 
set in action some one of the many opera- 
tions necessary. 

Hoskins? What was to be done with 
her ? And then, from all I could recall of 
her personality beyond her loosely balanced 
tongue, and the fact that she was large and 
dark, one little thing came back to me 
which brought me to my feet, a hopeful 
smile struggling with the swollen melan- 
choly of my features. She had a very red 
nose, which might result from a disordered 
stomach and might not. 

44 


An Eventful Night 

Very softly I opened the door of my 
room, for I had no wish to disturb the 
slumbers of the rest of the household, and 
very softly I tiptoed to the door of the 
sick-room, which I found standing a few 
inches ajar; on account of the heat I sur- 
nxised, for I could feel the hot air fanning 
my face as I peered in cautiously before 
entering. 

Everything was quiet. The bed I could 
not see plainly, but before the fire, which 
was blazing brightly, Mrs. Hoskins sat 
leaning back comfortably in a huge rocker, 
while her feet, in reckless disregard of the 
laws of grace and decorum, were hoisted 
upon a second chair, where they had slid 
from the red woollen blanket which had 
been wrapped about them, and confronted 
me as I approached, huge and motionless 
in their grey woollen casings, like sentinels 
before a sleeping city. For Mrs. Hoskins 
was sleeping. But even as I saw it, and 
moved back with my heart thumping vio- 
lently at the swift thought that, before 
waking her, that word of explanation I 
45 


An Eventful Night 


might, as my right, demand, could be 
spoken, she started peevishly awake. 

‘‘Lor’ a mercy,” she muttered pettishly, 
her eyes glaring at me wild and bleared; 
but she followed me willingly enough when 
I beckoned her into the hall, where we 
might talk without disturbing our patient. 

“Was she took any way that you heard ? ” 
she asked in a hoarse whisper, her mouth 
working with an abortive yawn. “I’m 
troubled with inflaming of the lids, an’ 
set mostly with my eyes shut. It’s more 
saving on ’em than glasses, besides being 
more handy.” 

“ I have been thinking over all possible 
causes for this attack,” I exclaimed with 
the absorbed air of a medical fanatic. 
“ Has the young lady been in the habit of 
drugging herself ? Does she ever use opi- 
ates of any kind to make her sleep ? ” and 
I glared at the woman as sternly as the 
limited use of my right eye would admit. 
Her wits were fogged with sleep and stirred 
slowly, but after staring dully at me for a 
moment, she brightened visibly, evidently 
46 


An Eventful Night 

fired with the hope of answering and get- 
ting rid of me. “ Yes, sir,” she answered 
eagerly, “ she do sometimes use a powder, 
an’ it’s often an’ often I’ve told her she 
hadn’t orter; but — she’s that stubborn and 
set, you’d hardly believe it, when she gets 
a notion.” 

‘‘She has some left? Bring them,” I 
said sternly. “ I shall sift this matter to 
the bottom.” 

“ Upwards of a dozen, I should say, sir,” 
and with a step heavy with sleep she moved 
away, returning after a few moments with 
a small green box in her hand. “These 
are ’um,” she said, giving vent to a mighty 
yawn which had been convulsing her since 
she started from her sleep. 

“You look all used up,” I said, fasten- 
ing a professional eye upon her. “You 
need something to brace you up. Have 
you nothing in there that you can take, a 
little wine, now, or even a drop of straight 
whiskey? ” 

Ah, I had not been mistaken. Her eyes 
lighted greedily, and then were overcast 
47 


An Eventful Night 


with helpless resentment. ‘‘I haven’t a 
drop of nothing,” she said sullenly. ‘‘ Mr. 
Brown is not of the thoughtful kind, 
and makes no reckoning of the wear and 
tear of being broke of one’s sleep as a 
stiddy thing. Them that goes to bed reg- 
ular,” she added morosely, can little esti- 
mate the needs of them that must set awake 
in their hours of rest.” 

“That is very true,” I remarked aus- 
terely. “But I shall have a word to say 
about that to-night. I can’t have you 
wearing out suddenly just when I may 
need you. Wait here for a moment, ” and, 
highly gratified with my clever trick, I 
took the box of powders and hurried back 
to my room, where, after pouring out a 
liberal glass of wine, I stood debating what 
next. On the box I read, “ Miss Bran- 
don. One powder every hour until re- 
lieved.” So my young friend’s name was 
Brandon. ‘ ‘ U ntil relieved ’ ’ — that meant, 
of course, until she should fall asleep. But 
surely if one powder was prescribed for so 
dainty an invalid, at least double that dose 
48 


An Eventful Night 

should be allowed for the great, robust 
creature I had just left, and hastily shak- 
ing in the contents of two of the folded 
papers, I rushed back into the hall where 
my victim was awaiting me. 

With what pleasure and self-congratula- 
tion did I watch her drain the glass to its 
uttermost dregs! Then we separated; she 
going her way to fall asleep, as I told my- 
self, inside of the next five minutes, and 
I mine, to gloat in secret over the easy vic- 
tory I had won. Five minutes I waited in 
restless inaction, and then felt tempted to 
go and view my work. But there was no 
hurry, and taking a chair by the fire, I had 
determined to wait patiently for another 
five, when the sound of shuffling steps in 
the hallway outside brought me to my feet 
in vague alarm. 

Had my fraud been discovered? Had 

Dr. A come back to life and followed 

me ? My hand fiew to my pocket, where it 
grasped a small penknife, my sole weapon, 
when the door opened, and in walked Mrs. 
Hoskins in a state of feverish excitement. 

4 49 


An Eventful Night 


She was carrying a box in her hand, a 
blue one this time, and she flung it down 
before me with a most disrespectful dis- 
play of ill-temper. “ Them’s the sleeping 
powders,” she snapped, laying her hand 
upon her head with a reeling motion while 
I stared at her in lively horror. ‘‘But 
how is one to tell, with writin’ worse than 
them as don’t lay claim to be no scholards ? 
Lor’ help me, them spirits went straight 
to my head,” she went on. “Which is 
rightly your hand, sir?” snatching va- 
cantly into the air beside me. “You look 
to have a dozent.” 

What had I done? In the name of 
mercy, of what had I given a double dose 
to the poor creature? Wildly I turned 
over in my mind all possible poisons and 
their antidotes: milk, oil, whites of eggs, 
all danced before me. Women sometimes, 
I had heard, took dreadful things for their 
complexions. Was there to be a second 
corpse on my hands that night ? And yet, 
once more, it had not been my fault. 

Rushing at the tottering woman, I got 
50 


An Eventful Night 

her into a chair, gazing at her as I did in 
such an agony of fear, lest she drop dead 
in my grasp, that she took the alarm her- 
self, and making certain that death was 
near, turned such a greenish white that, 
without reasoning what I was about, I 
seized another tumbler of the spirits and 
dashed it down her throat, with scarcely 
more caution than I would have used had 
I pitched it into the kitchen drain. Fear 
of her immediate death, that and that 
only, was my motive in stocking her thus 
heavily with the strong liquor, and what 
followed cannot be laid at my door, ex- 
cepting in the form of an unmerited acci- 
dent. Yet I understand there are those 
who do not take the same view of the 
matter. 

At first the poor creature choked, which 
I will admit was- my fault in that I forced 
the liquor on her so abruptly. I was sorry 
for my awkward zeal, and aided her to the 
best of my power to regain her breath, pat- 
ting her violently upon the back, while her 
gurgling, though deep, was low. But 
51 


An Eventful Night 


once she had passed this stage, I saw what 
that second glass had done; saw reason 
leave her eye and give place to a silly stu- 
por; saw and flung a pillow upon the floor 
to which she shambled and sank down 
babbling. 

‘^I’m feeling very comfortable, thank 
you,” she gabbled as I strove to drag her 
farther from the Are; “ but my head ain’t 
what it should be. Too much setting up 
of nights has done it.” 

But I heard no more. Fleeing my sec- 
ond victim, I hurried across the hall, to 
tap as light as a feather against the door 
of the sick-room, though had my own ears 
been all I cared to reach, the loud thump- 
ing of my heart at that moment would 
have equalled the booming of any cannon. 

As though my timid knuckles had 
touched some hidden spring, the door re- 
sponded instantly, and through a slight 
aperture a wisp of dark hair waved, and 
the gleam of a flne eye shone on me, as a 
whispering voice asked me what I wanted. 

“It is I,” I faltered idiotically, forget- 
52 


An Eventful Night 


ting that I had as yet no identity with my 
questioner beyond the rather vague one of 
a medical man. “I’m the doctor, you 
know,” I added huskily, my tongue refus- 
ing me the service of a glib lie. 

“ Oh,” with a most delightful inflection, 
and the door swung an inch or two far- 
ther open; but in place of accepting this 
friendly advance, I skulked back into the 
shade of the unlit hall like a sheepish 
assassin. 

‘ ‘ Where is Mrs. Hoskins ? ” came in the 
same guarded whisper. “ Look out for 
her, she may be hiding somewhere. She 
does that lots, and then dodges out. Oh, 
she’s just horrid! ” 

“ She won’t now. She — she’s asleep,” 
I faltered. “ I gave her something — some 
of your powders,” hut no sooner had I ut- 
tered the words than I repented my con- 
fession. What if, after all, it was not the 
wine which had affected her; what if even 
then she was breathing her last, in some 
horrid death agony! The thought was 
sickening. 


53 


An Eventful Night 


‘‘Oh, oh, how awfully clever!” And 
there was a sound as of soft hands beaten 
together gently. “But the dog!” was 
the next dismayed exclamation. “ They’ve 
let him out again. I heard him champing 
about down there just a moment ago. Oh, 
you may depend on it, we can never get 
out if he isn’t done away with.” 

I had forgotten the brute, and I must 
confess that but for the gleam of that fine 
eye, which had grown plainer and devel- 
oped into a pair, I should have felt much 
vexed at the reminder. If I could only 
give him sleeping powders ! My ear heark- 
ened painfully for the slightest sound from 
the room I had left. “ Oh, I think we can 
manage the dog all right,” I said lightly, 
while not the faintest plan as to how I was 
to make good my words suggested itself to 
my mind. In the mood I then was I could 
have strangled any beast with my naked 
hands, and relished the details of the task 
at that. 

“ Oh, how awfully clever you are ! ” came 
in an admiring gasp from behind the half- 
54 


An Eventful Night 

open door. But if you’re going to shoot, 
please let me know before you set the gun 
ofE, or I shall be sure to scream. I always 
do.” 

“I shall not shoot,” I said with a pa- 
tience begot of the fine eyes and fluffy hair. 
“ It wouldn’t do, you know. The noise 
would ” 

‘‘Why, to be sure!” with a soft little 
laugh. “ It would make a mess of every- 
thing, but you see I’m so stupid. Good- 
bye now. I’ll get dressed and be all 
ready,” and the door shut gently in my 
face, leaving me standing alone in the 
darkness gaping helplessly about me. 

“All ready,” she said. I could have 
laughed aloud, but that I felt more in- 
clined for tears. All ready for what? 
Well, I could not improve matters by 
standing there, so with a reluctant step 
I turned to re-enter the chamber I had 
left. 

What should I see? A horrid, staring 
corpse, a miserable frothing object all but 
gone, yet with strength left to rise and 
55 


An Eventful Night 


curse me? If so, good-bye even to fine 
eyes and soft, dark hair. I had stood a 
great deal that night, but there were limits, 
I felt, to my endurance. 

With a sinking heart I pushed the door 
open, only to jump back in hysterical 
amazement. The woman was afoot again, 
and babbling foolishly! What was to be 
done ? How gladly then would I have ex- 
changed her for the corpse I had so dreaded 
to see ! There was little sense in what she 
said, but I made out that she was looking 
for Miss Brandon, and I managed to quiet 
that cry by telling her Miss Brandon was 
asleep, and must not be disturbed, at the 
same time tearing about in search of some- 
thing to do with her while she trailed at 
my heels with dog-like devotion. 

And then her intoxication, if such I can 
call it, began to take alarming forms, 
which preyed dreadfully on my conscience. 
Her vision grew shockingly distorted, and 
what with her resolution to follow me 
about, and the number of me she seemed 
to see, she was forever taking imaginary 
56 


An Eventful Night 

walks with me in parts of the room where 
I was not, talking as readily to any piece 
of furniture as to me, and never finding 
out her mistake unless she happened to 
run against me. 

‘^Heavings above,” she would whisper 
hoarsely to a tall dresser by the window, 
“I can’t rightly make out. Doctor, how 
it is you come to be so leggy all of a sud- 
dint;” and then to the washstand, as I 
chased her there: “ Give her nateral sleep. 
Doctor, give her nateral sleep, and she’ll 
pull through somehow. I’ve said it be- 
fore, an’ I say it now, sleep is what we 
need, and plenty of it.” 

It was a shameful situation, and what 
was worse, I distinctly heard steps below. 
The creature’s babbling tongue had started 
some one awake. With a desperate hand 
I jerked open the next door to me, and 
when I found it admitted me to a small, 
dark closet I did not hesitate. “ Miss 
Brandon is in here,” I hissed in the wom- 
an’s ear, snatching her frantically by the 
arm. ‘‘Go in and lie down beside her. 

57 


An Eventful Night 


It will keep her quiet, and then you can 
have your sleep out.” 

She obeyed me in the same dog-like man- 
ner in which she had followed me about, 
and although, in the face of this docility, 
it seemed a brutal act, I turned the key 
securely upon her, feeling an almost mur- 
derous thrill of satisfaction as her murmur- 
ing died away in the denser stupor into 
which the confined air of the place plunged 
her. 

And none too soon did those mutterings 
cease, for I now distinctly heard steps 
mounting the stairs, with evident care not 
to tread too roughly. Not daring to meet 
any questioner where I then was, I rushed 
softly into the hall, where the happy con- 
ception seized me of affecting to be just on 
the point of leaving the sick-room, when 
my visitor should come up. It was well, 
though, that the darkness of the hall con- 
cealed my guilt-stained features, or the 
merest child must have detected some mis- 
chief brewing. 

‘‘ Is that you. Doctor ? ” came in a growl- 
58 


An Eventful Night 


ing whisper from Brown, while a firm, cool 
hand seized me so suddenly I all but 
shrieked, so shattered was my self-control. 

“ What in the are you up to, anyhow ? 

It sounded as though a pair of you were 
dancing the minuet. I thought an order 
for quiet was given.” 

‘‘And so it was,” I managed to say 
coldly, as a man without humour who feels 
himself affronted with a jest. “ But I 
hope that does not interfere with Mrs. 
Hoskins heating fiannels at my orders for 
your niece, now that her fever has suddenly 
left her.” 

Brown gave a soft whistle. “ To be sure 
not,” he said with more civility; “I in- 
tended no disrespect, I assure you, but 
kindly ask Hoskins to toe-and-heel it in 
her stocking feet hereafter.” 

“ Sir! ” exclaimed I irritably. 

“ I’m a wretched sleeper,” he explained, 
coming hastily back to dignified discourse, 
“and Hoskins should know it. I can’t 
imagine how she had the temerity to go 
crashing about so.” 


59 


An Eventful Night 


Shivering like a wind-swept reed, I 
waited for him to demand that he should 
see his niece, or call for the disgraced Hos- 
kins, but these trials were not laid upon 
me, for now with a restless yawn he left 
me, after a mild hope for the further im- 
provement of his niece, and when the last 
echoes of his steps had died away I crept 
back to the room I had left, and stood 
trembling there for some moments before 
I could be certain that he had really gone, 
with no suspicion to bring him creeping 
up those stairs again. 

For ten minutes I waited, while the house 
was silent as the grave. Hot a board 
creaked, not a curtain rustled. Then, 
drawing off my shoes, I made softly across 
to a window which I reasoned must look 
out upon the place where the ferocious 
bloodhound lurked. Inch by inch, like 
a trained housebreaker, I raised the 
sash, my heart stopping dead still at the 
faintest creak, then rushing on with 
congestive jerks at an easy slide, until 
finally it was propped up at a height to 
60 


An Eventful Night 

admit of putting out my head and shoul- 
ders. 

Cautiously I peered forth into the dark- 
ness ; for dark it was, with only a star glim- 
mering here and there, and nothing but 
faint outlines of the jagged mountain 
peaks showing themselves against the sky. 
The air was keen and cold, and the ground 
covered with a skim of hard, dry snow. A 
nice night, indeed, for people to be launch- 
ing themselves from second-story windows 
and taking to their heels through unknown 
frozen districts! 

‘‘ We’ll end up at the bottom of a caflon 
with a fractured bone or two for company,” 
I muttered as I let my gaze roam despon- 
dently about. ‘‘There’s the dog, sure 
enough,” as my eyes, becoming more ac- 
customed to the darkness, made out a mov- 
ing, black body on the snow beneath. 

It is one thing to look down at a dog 
from a second-story window, and another, 
and quite a different thing, to rid yourself 
quietly of him. On any other night I 
should have exclaimed, “ Impossible,” and 
61 


An Eventful Night 


tamely closed the window. But on this 
special night my mind seemed fairly lurid 
with bright thoughts. I suddenly sped 
back to the table, clutched the napkin 
from my lunch tray, and found that I had 
not exhausted the generous supply of cold 
meat sent up for my refreshment. With 
trembling fingers I spread out the contents 
of the medicine chest upon a chair close 
by, and began in a purblind fashion to 
study the different labels. 

Confusion seized upon my mind at the 
first row. How could medical men pre- 
tend to understand such gibberish? My 
mind had not been neglected in my youth, 
and yet I could make nothing of it. De- 
feat stared me in the face; but with a cold, 
proud smile, I counted the number of bot- 
tles I had before me. Then with a few 
bold slashes I had the meat quartered and 
lying ready to my hand. 

This done, and the bottles divided into 
four different sets, and ranged conven- 
iently about me, my real work began. The 
first relay of bottles came to me in the 
62 


An Eventful Night 

form of powders. I dipped section number 
one of my meat supply in the milk jug be- 
fore I attempted to smear it over with as 
much of the powdery stuff as I could make 
hang on, being careful to take a fair 
amount from each bottle, in hopes that in 
some one of them lay the deadly drug I 
sought. It was remarkable how much I 
made that piece of cold beef hold. When 
not another grain would stick I gathered 
it up gingerly, crept to the window, took 
accurate aim, and flung it straight at the 
feet of the restless animal. 

They must have kept the brute half 
starved, for with a plunge and a snap he 
seemed to catch the morsel while it was 
yet in the air. But nothing happened; 
his restless walk went on, and impatiently 
I rushed back to my ghastly work. This 
time it was liquids with which I had to 
deal, and my work was easier, but how 
they smelled ! The house seemed reeking 
with their biting fumes, and it was with 
streaming eyes I again sought the window, 
and stood with my second prescription sus- 
63 


An Eventful Night 


pended over the hazy space below. No 
need to peer about in the darkness now in 
search of my restless prey. The animal 
expected me, and crouched directly be- 
neath my window, where the light from 
the lamp shone, upon his gaunt frame, re- 
vealing him with his huge jaws distended; 
a pretty sight for one who might at any 
moment be pitched forth to become his 
midnight lunch. Out went my second 
lot. I could see him plainly this time. 
He met it, his full length from the ground, 
with an appetite perfectly disheartening. 
Not even its horrid smell fazed him, and 
down it went with a dreadful champing 
sound. 

While completely discouraged, I turned 

again to the table. What did Dr. A 

keep in his chest, anyhow? Drugs de- 
signed solely for the use of teething chil- 
dren ? And yet who could tell ? Perhaps 
my method might be bad. I might be 
doing up poisons and antidotes in the same 
bundle. This time I mixed powders and 
liquids with an impartial and liberal hand, 
64 


An Eventful Night 


but it was with only the faintest hope that 
I gathered up my third dose, and again 
sought my post at the window. The dog 
was not there! Was not there, nor was he 
dead! I could see him, see him plainly, if 
that mass of moving snow and fur could 
be a dog. Faint, angry yelps rose from 
the tossing heap, and my heart stood still. 
Then, suddenly, as I looked, the mass took 
shape, and rose and ran as nothing de- 
pendent on mere legs ever ran before, melt- 
ing away into the darkness beyond, with a 
long, low howl which struck stone-cold 
upon my fainting heart. 

“We are undone,” I all but cried, for 
that mournful howl must set even the 
cocks crowing upon their roosts! Then 
came the thought that speed might even 
yet save us, for once outside, who was to 
follow us in such darkness, with enough 
and more than enough of caverns about 
into which we might crawl and evade pur- 
suit? Why we were doing it at all, and 
what right we had to evade pursuit, I had 
no time to consider as again I fled the 
5 65 


An Eventful Night 


room, which was strewn all about with 
evidences of my late traffic in animal life. 
The disordered boxes which had been 
handed me by the now helpless Hoskins; 
the uncorked medicine phials, all spoke 
loudly to me of my deadly work, and I 
could but feel like some beast of prey 
creeping from its lair, as I stole out and 
closed the door behind me. 

This time my knock at the door of the 
second chamber was less guarded, for my 
nerves were getting into a horrible state; 
but it was not so quickly answered, and I 
was growing alarmed, when it was flung 
wide open, though very noiselessly, and 
Miss Brandon stood before me, not dressed 
in her flowing robes, but in a trim suit of 
black, such as you might see a dozen of 
any day in a well-dressed crowd, only they 
would not all be so becoming to their own- 
ers. Over this she wore a short fur coat. 
Her hair was tucked away under a cap to 
match, and there she stood, looking so 
warm, so fresh and smiling, that somehow 
the memory of my bandages came back to 


An Eventful Night 

me, filling me with such a sense of defor- 
mity and inferiority that I think my bear- 
ing took colour from the morbid abasement 
of my mind. 

I know that I held my right eye with 
one hand while I talked to her, and that I 
shuffled on my feet as she looked at me, 
while I bit my tongue to keep from crying 
aloud that I was not the bloodless old do- 
tard she so fondly dreamed me to be. 

“ Oh,” she burst out in an excited whis- 
per as soon as her eyes fell on me, “you 
do think of the funniest things! Now tell 
me whatever you have done to that dread- 
ful dog to make him go running about so, 
scratching things! ” 

“ Did you hear him yelping ? ” 

“I guess that’s what dogs do. I was 
just sure he’d wake everybody up, weren’t 
you ? ” 

I had been, indeed, and yet was. At 
that very moment I fancied I could hear 
some one moving, and bracing up my man- 
hood, I spoke decidedly in spite of those 
things about my jaw. 

67 


An Eventful Night 

‘‘We must go at once/’ I said, moving 
into the room with a cat-like step. “Will 
you he able to hang on to one end of a 
blanket while I lower you from the win- 
dow?” 

I dared not look at her while I made 
this cool proposal, for I fully expected her 
to turn pale and shrink hack; besides, the 
horrid suspicion haunted me that, even 
should she consent, it would end in her 
completing my list of victims, and what 
with the doctor, Mrs. Hoskins, and the 
dog, I was sickened of blood. 

To my amazement she laughed — a de- 
lightful, gentle, little chuckle which made 
me long more keenly than ever to bury the 
snuffy old doctor and rise myself to fill his 
shoes. 

“ Oh, how perfectly killing it will be! ” 
she whispered, seeking for sympathy in 
the depths of my dull, swollen eye. “ See ! 
The window is all ready for us. I was put- 
ting it up when I saw the dog.” 

Suddenly I started, stabbed to the heart 
with fresh trouble. I had dragged a 


An Eventful Night 

blanket from the large chair in which Mrs. 
Hoskins had been sitting, and was testing 
its strength as best I could, when it oc- 
curred to me that all my out-door apparel 
was down-stairs. I certainly could not 
venture out on such a night, not knowing 
how long I might remain dodging about, 
without some sort of covering, yet I dared 
not go down-stairs in search of mine. 

“ My cap and coat,” was the cry wrung 
from me in my distress. Instantly my 
companion grasped the situation with smil- 
ing composure. 

“ Are down-stairs,” she finished for me. 
‘‘ Of course we canH think of going to get 
them, but there are some of Mrs. Hoskins’ 
things here that will do. She’s so dread- 
fully big, you know,” and before I could 
prevent her, she had dived into a closet 
close at hand, from which she emerged 
presently, triumphantly holding up to my 
view a large grey and black plaid shawl 
and one of those many-coloured woollen 
bags known as ^‘toboggan caps.” It was 
the last straw to my overburdened vanity ! 

69 


An Eventful Night 


Wear them! I could have snatched them 
from her, flung them on the floor at her 
feet, and stamped upon them, but for the 
added absurdity. And then, too, what 
awkward evidence in the shape of card- 
case, marked handkerchief, or other fatal 
trifle might I not leave in the pockets of 
my abandoned coat! 

Insulted, perplexed, and downright an- 
gry, I stood glaring about me, but before 
I had voiced my annoyance a faint sound 
below put flight to all thought of more 
trifling discomforts. Some one was mov- 
ing cautiously, whether towards us or from 
us, to seek or avoid, I could not tell; but 
it decided me to haggle no longer over my 
appearance, good or bad. Literally snatch- 
ing the horrible headgear from Miss Bran- 
don, who was tranquilly kneading it into 
shape, I crammed it down about my ears, 
feeling a certain savage delight in the self- 
torture I inflicted. 

It will be warm, anyway,” murmured 
my companion, with a glance of kindly 
amusement which I haughtily ignored. 

70 


An Eventful Night 

“ Come/’ I said briefly, snatching up 
the blanket, ‘‘we have not a second to 
lose,” and I rushed stealthily to the open 
window, and flung out in advance the shawl 
which was to serve me as a covering. Miss 
Brandon following me in a state of what, 
I could plainly see, was pleased excitement. 

The window was high up from the floor, 
and as we stopped before it she looked 
into my swollen eye with a face of innocent 
expectation: “I can’t get up there alone, 
you know,” she whispered, and with an 
almost audible groan I put my arm gin- 
gerly about her fur-clad waist, and the 
next instant she was sitting with her feet 
outside, holding towards me her ungloved 
hands for the blanket. The morbid fear 
which possessed me that she was to make 
my fourth victim was not lessened by that 
moment in which I held her in my arms, 
and as she grasped the quilt with two small 
white hands and looked at me with a 
friendly nod, to tell me that she was ready 
for the drop, I felt every particle of 
strength leave my body. 

71 


An Eventful Night 


‘‘Come back,” I faltered, but she was 
over the side, and with desperate hands I 
clutched the blanket. 

It seemed so short. Had I miscalculated 
the height of the window? I dared not 
look down as I leaned far out, giving the 
full length of my arms to the clumsy con- 
trivance. Suddenly the weight left it. 
Had she fallen ? My eyes seemed glazed 
as I turned them downwards. There was 
.a black heap upon the snow beneath. Was 
she living or dead ? 

But now again sounded that step below. 
It seemed nearer this time. It was com- 
ing upstairs, coming softly, and pausing 
on each step, as though some one had 
stopped to listen. It had a horrid sound 
in that gloomy house, and I seemed to see 
a dark face gliding toward me, a white 
hand uplifted, to hush the very echoes 
that he might hear. I had meant to do 
many things the time for which was 
passed. The closet door — I had meant to 
unlock it upon the hapless Hoskins, but 
now the feet had reached the hall. With 
72 


An Eventful Night 

a warning hiss for my conspirator below, 
I swung myself from the window and 
dropped, speculating, even while I fell, 
on the probable length of my life should 
some part of me double up and strike 
wrong in my mad plunge. 

The window was either higher than I 
had calculated, or I fell upon slanting 
ground, for I struck so solidly that I had 
the breath knocked out of me, and when 
my senses became clear again, I found that 
Miss Brandon had set me upright, and was 
dabbing at me with frozen snow, and set- 
ting my cap straight upon my head, with 
a freedom she would never have exercised 
had she not learned to regard me as a 
harmless married creature who could safely 
be tumbled about. 

Thrusting aside the snow with no gentle 
hand, for her daughterly care was growing 
perfectly intolerable, I was instantly upon 
my feet. 

“Eun,” I whispered, and we ran, she 
like a spirited young deer in its first en- 
counter with the hounds, and I — really, 
73 


An Eventful Night 


after the way I spun along that night, I 
cannot see how she could suspect such a 
pair of heels as I showed to the old house 
behind us of having learned to potter 
about in carpet slippers. 

Quick as our flight had been, it was be- 
gun none too soon; for by the time the 
darkness swallowed us, the whole house 
seemed suddenly to blaze up with hurry- 
ing lights, while a loud shout reached us 
and increased our pace. Suddenly, right 
in our path, a man sprang up, waving his 
arms before us, as at a runaway horse. He 
may have been a harmless citizen. Possi- 
bly he was only startled at our sudden ap- 
pearance, but as to that I shall never be 
certain, for I had no time to question him 
nor reason with him. All that I could do 
was to knock him down, which I did with 
such brutal awkwardness that he collapsed 
without a struggle, and my knuckles were 
badly grazed against the poor creature’s 
skull. 

“ Dear me, I hit too hard,” I muttered, 
in answer to a little shriek from Miss 
74 


An Eventful Night 

Brandon, and then we brought up against 
a stone wall, on a level with my head as to 
height, and jagged as broken glass. 

“ Oh, my gracious! ” gasped Miss Bran- 
don. ‘‘ Whatever will we do — and, say, 
do you think the man is dead ? ” 

“ More than likely,” I groaned, making 
a grim note of my fourth victim. ‘‘ Can 
you jump. Miss Brandon?” 

“Yes, yes. Oh, do hurry!” she whis- 
pered ; and taking her waist in both hands, 
I gave her a mighty lift, which she sec- 
onded with a spring so light that it set her 
upon the top of the wall, gazing anxiously 
down at me, at least I judged her to be 
anxious by her voice. 

“How will you ever make it?” she 
whispered, leaning down until I was in 
agony lest she should fall. “Dear me, 
your poor hands! Oh, oh!” in pitying 
horror, as I dug my way up the side, 
breathless and bloody, nearly losing my 
unsightly cap, and suffering the ignominy 
of having her again clap it upon my head. 

“ However do you keep so limber ? ” she 
75 


An Eventful Night 


murmured admiringly, as, gnashing my 
teeth at her friendly service, I sat for one 
second to catch my breath. I hope you 
didn’t kill that man, though. You must 
have hit him in the wrong place.” 

‘‘I’m afraid I did,” I stammered guilt- 
ily. “We were running hard, you know.” 

“Yes, I know,” she said hastily and 
soothingly, and then severely: “Coming 
on to you in the dark that way, how could 
he expect to be hit right ? ” 

“We must go,” I said. “Are you 
ready? ” 

“Yes, and I have your shawl,” she said 
sweetly. 

“ My shawl ! ” At that moment I would 
have frozen to a brittle mass before I would 
have touched the thing, but I was still 
warm from running, so my manhood was 
not tempted. Down I went on the oppo- 
site side of the wall. At the same moment 
I saw the door burst open by some one, 
who rushed headlong into the yard. 
“ Quick! quick! ” I called to my compan- 
ion, and without a question as to why, she 
76 


An Eventful Night 


dropped tranquilly into my arms, a deli- 
cate shape, all warm and furry. 

‘‘ Do you know which way to go ? ” I 
muttered, as I quickly released her. 

‘‘ I haven’t the faintest idea,” came the 
cheerful whisper, and then we were off 
running again, with more care of our 
strength, this time, and I possessed by 
lively expectations that at any moment 
we might puncture some snowdrift and 
find that it was but the upper crust of a 
bottomless abyss. The main road we must 
not take, even could we find it, which 
seemed anything but likely; and we 
plunged about, knee-deep in snow. Blank- 
ness of fear settled on me as I realized the 
dangers we were facing. ‘‘ Who ever saw 
anything so pitchy-blank as this night?” 
I exclaimed, peevish with alarm for my 
companion; for myself, the gallows seemed 
so imminent that all lesser terrors paled 
before it. 

Yes, but it’s the only thing that saves 
us, you know,” tranquilly observed Miss 
Brandon, as I picked her out of a small 
77 


An Eventful Night 


ditch. ‘‘ But what’s that snuffling about 
so ? ” and she shrank towards me in a way 
that shook my moral nature again to its 
very centre. 

It was the dog. A changed dog, indeed, 
with all its fury spent, and nothing much 
you could call dog left about it, but a drag- 
gled shape and tumbled fur; yet still dan- 
gerous to us if it was disposed to haunt our 
path, for who could tell at what moment 
it might break out into the melancholy 
baying which had before alarmed us. 

‘‘I must kill it,” I muttered to myself, 
but Miss Brandon heard me, and faintly 
screamed. 

“Oh, dear,” she wailed, “what dread- 
ful things we seem to be doing all of the 
time! First that man, and now the dog. 
It makes us seem like bloody-minded crea- 
tures.” 

“Bun on a few steps, please, to that 
tree,” I said gently. 

With a little shudder she obeyed me, 
putting her fingers in her ears as she ran, 
while I, pouncing like a huge bat upon 
78 


An Eventful Night 

my prey, soon put as merciful an end to 
him as possible, considering my only weapon 
was my pocket-knife. 

Once dead, though, he must be hidden, 
and in great haste I tumbled snow and 
brush upon him. Then — for I either 
heard voices or all the excitement I had 
been through was rendering me fanciful — 
I rose and ran towards the spot where I 
expected to find Miss Brandon, only to 
spring back, barely restraining a shout of 
terror. She was gone ! 

“They have taken her,’" I gasped, a 
sudden blank regret which I had no time 
to analyze sweeping over me. Then, set- 
ting my teeth, I plunged forward, and 
with two strides found myself stepping off 
into space. The fifteen or twenty minutes 
during which I seemed to be steadily fall- 
ing gave me the impression of being in- 
finite. But I finally struck, fortunately 
for my earthly career, in a bed of snow, 
through which I rolled and gasped, fetch- 
ing up at last with a painful thump against 
something so solid that my airy, light- 
79 


An Eventful Night 


headed sensation of infinite space was im- 
mediately swallowed up in acute physical 
pain. 

Oh, so you fell, too! ” exclaimed some 
one close beside me. ‘‘How queer we should 
both do it! Eeally now, we ought to be 
thankful; it might have been quite un- 
pleasant.” 

“ Might have been quite unpleasant.” 
And there I sat, with every part of my 
clothing filled with melting snow and my 
head ringing. Eeally, if she had been a 
plain woman — but here! I belie myself. 
I have quite a reputation for courtesy, and 
I think that I partially deserve it, for, after 
coughing up much melted snow, I asked 
her, in a strangled voice, if she was in- 
jured in any way. 

“ Not the least bit in the world,” she an- 
swered cheerfully, whipping at the back of 
my collar with her handkerchief. “ My, 
but you’re full of snow, though ! Do you 
know, it is so funny; but I actually 
brought your shawl the whole way down 
here with me! You’d better put it on 
80 


An Eventful Night 

now, and warm up. You may have 
strained yourself somehow, but they say if 
you keep warm you won’t stiffen.” 

That shawl again ! It was too much ! 

“Miss Brandon,” I cried, excitedly 
springing to my feet, then I stopped ab- 
ruptly, and taking her by the arm drew 
her as far back as possible in the shelter 
of the rock against which I had grazed in 
my fall. “Hush, hush!” I whispered 
uselessly, for she had made no attempt to 
speak, and I pointed upwards as I crouched 
beside her, for lights were beginning to dot 
the gloom above us in many places; hurry- 
ing lights, held low and tearing headlong, 
like so many burning eyeballs. 

“ They have tracked us,” I groaned, for 
I heard a shout. “ There is nothing for 
it, we must run again. But which way ? 
This thing seems to begin and end in 
snow.” 

“ Oh, there’s no great hurry,” said my 
companion coolly, with a little nod which 
I could see plainly as I gazed at her in 
horror. “ I shall get my breath first, and 
6 81 


An Eventful Night 


besides there is some snow down my collar, 
which must be got out or I shall be in a 
dreadful condition.” 

‘‘But, Miss Brandon,” I protested stern- 
ly, “they are close upon us; they ” 

She gave a good-natured little laugh. I 
could scarcely believe it, but she did. 
“How funny men are!” she said pleas- 
antly, working at her collar, with success 
I knew, for bits of snow flew into my hor- 
ror-stricken face as I leaned over her. 
“ Why, don’t you see that the fun of it is 
they must take their time about getting 
here? They won’t dare just walk up and 
fall down as we did. It wouldn’t do, you 
know. One might hit wrong. You came 
pretty near it.” 

It was perfectly true, but it made me 
seem painfully stupid to have to take such 
plain sense second-hand, and from a young 
girl at that. We could not get out, that 
was clear enough. It was equally clear, 
when I considered it, that they could not 
get down to us without returning to the 
house for ropes, or ladders, for no sane 
82 


An Eventful Night 


man would deliberately take such a leap 
in that pitchy darkness. 

Oh, for some outlet! I was teeming 
with inspirations, but, alas ! they were en- 
cased in clumsy flesh. A sudden bright 
flame from the freshest of them brought 
me to my feet, where a pair of sordid heels 
blew out the illumination, and down I came 
upon my back, with the end of my tongue 
well-nigh bitten through from the shock. 

‘‘ Oh, do be careful! ” wailed Miss Bran- 
don, dragging at my shoulders to set me 
upright, while I muttered something be- 
neath my breath which I shall not record. 
Another shout reached us — a flerce, ex- 
cited shout. Had they found the spot 
where I had performed my clumsy execu- 
tion of the dog ? If so, murder or suicide 
must be their inevitable conclusion, and 
they would be hot after the survivor. 
There must be no longer delay. Breath 
or no breath, we must do something before 
it was too late. “ Come, Miss Brandon,” 
I said flrmly, and taking her by the arm 
I lifted her to her feet, only for us both to 
83 


An Eventful Night 


lose our balance together and go skating 
away upon a new-found icy incline. 

It was clear to me now where we were. 
We were adrift upon the frozen bed of one 
of those mountain streams about whose 
summer music my sister had discoursed in 
her letters home. I remembered well how 
she had made them “leap from rock to 
rock,” hide themselves in granite caverns, 
“and then burst forth again all fierce and 
tortured from their brief restraint,” all of 
which had sounded well in the letters ; but 
when it came to sliding down this ice-clad 
winding idyll, with a delicate young lady 
for your companion, a band of desperadoes 
scouring along the mountain side in search 
of you, no coat on your back, and the 
memory of two dead men and a dead dog 
behind you, making the thought of your 
probable venture into the next world some- 
thing to be avoided if possible, — I could 
have wished the “ windings in and out ” 
a shade less fantastic, and would have en- 
tirely omitted that “ bounding from rock 
to rock,” had choice been given me. 

84 


An Eventful Night 

In the darkness I could not estimate the 
length of our first fall, for I distrusted my 
reckoning made in mid-air; hut that it 
was considerable seemed clear from the 
subdued sound of the men’s voices, even 
when, as I reasoned, they must be almost 
directly above us. And that our lives were 
saved by the heavy accumulation of snow 
on which we struck, but on which no one 
would dare to count if making a wanton 
leap, was proved to me beyond a doubt. 
In the light of our late leap it was mad- 
ness to make fresh ventures. And yet it 
was an ignominious thought — that of sit- 
ting there until ladders were brought, 
and we were dug out and carried back. 
Had it been broad daylight, with noth- 
ing behind to drive us, I now feel cer- 
tain that I should never have left my 
soft nest in those snow banks. Certainly, 
I should never have drawn Miss Bran- 
don from hers ; but as it was, we went 
on, and happily I seemed possessed with 
the off-hand indifference of a sleep-walker. 
I saw not, and yet I could walk. I 
85 


An Eventful Night 

used no reason, but a sort of dull in- 
stinct. 

As for my companion, nothing could ex- 
ceed her cheerful indifference to our sur- 
roundings, and although I knew perfectly 
well that this condition rose entirely from 
her utter ignorance of all the common 
laws, rules, and usages she was trampling 
under her pretty feet, what was I to do ? 
Death shrieked at her in every chill breath 
that blew about our shivering forms, and 
threatened her with every clinging snow- 
drop which fastened itself upon her gar- 
ments, and she — she said, ‘‘ Dear me, how 
sharp,” to the icy wind, and bent her head 
to meet its force, and flapped off the cling- 
ing snow with graceful petulance. 

How many times in our wild course down 
the stream’s bed only a hair’s breadth sepa- 
rated us from certain destruction I will not 
attempt to guess. Certainly we must often 
have been so near to the dark river that its 
murmurings might have reached our ears. 
We were a snow slide, an avalanche, any- 
thing you please but human beings, and I, 
86 


An Eventful Night 


for one, became accustomed to travelling 
considerable stretches upon the back of my 
head, while that detested shawl I dignified 
into a sort of pad for Miss Brandon in some 
of our straighter shoots. 

I don’t know that we travelled very far 
this way. I am quite certain that we did 
not, but I have been to other continents 
and back since with less seeming expendi- 
ture of time, and have never, before or 
since, viewed with such joy any inanimate 
object as I did the light which suddenly 
appeared before us, not many yards away. 
A poor, mean light it was, coming from 
some smoky lamp, I fancied, and shining 
through the window of a miner’s hut; but 
no blaze of glory ever thrilled my heart 
with such gratitude. 

“Look, look. Miss Brandon!” I cried, 
and then we both fell again, to alight 
upon comparatively level ground, not far 
from the hut and its cheering light. But 
when I raised my companion from the 
ground, she lay in my arms limp and 
motionless, a cut on her forehead, and a 
87 


An Eventful Night 

dark stream trickling down over her still 
features. 

I thought her dead, and a great madness 
seemed to possess me. Snatching her close 
against me, I ran, with no sense of her 
weight, through a door-yard thickly strewn 
with snow-covered objects, like lumps of 
wood, old buckets, and other litter. Stum- 
bling among them as I did, I came to no 
stop, but bounding blindly over the last 
thing in my path, I brought my knuckles 
upon the door with a sudden, loud thump, 
which I had not the humanity to realize 
must bring the heart into the throat of 
any solitary dweller in that lonely place. 

No answer came. I grew furious, and 
from pounding with my knuckles, fell to 
hammering with my fists, and then to 
kicking, all the time shouting for admit- 
tance in a voice so hoarse with fatigue and 
excitement that it must have sounded like 
the croaking of some asthmatic madman. 
A fiercer kick than all at length brought 
the door open, with an explosion of wood 
and nails that made even the insensible 
88 


An Eventful Night 

girl in my arms start up with a cry of ter- 
ror ; and that cry, which told that life had 
not deserted her, brought me back with a 
rush of shame to my surroundings. 

Filled with misgivings at my mode of 
entrance, I gazed about, at first seeing no 
one, and then I spied, drawn up at bay in 
a far corner, the gaunt figure of a woman 
clutching in one hand a huge meat knife, 
which she brandished with a slow, par- 
alyzed movement of terror. She was 
dressed after a fashion, having got one 
arm through some sort of a coarse woollen 
wrapper, but her feet were bare, and her 
long toes curled up like talons. 

Stand back!” she called, in a quav- 
ering voice, and then as I did not, but 
crowded myself yet farther in, all spent 
and dishevelled as I was, covered with snow 
and staggering beneath the weight of the 
fainting girl, she set up such a series of 
shrieks as drowned every attempt at con- 
solation or apology, screaming out, and 
asking to be protected from every crime 
on the calendar. 


An Eventful Night 


‘‘Madam!” I shrieked, in an attempt 
to drown a double call for murder and 
thieves, “no one intends to harm you. 
Oblige me with a little wine or brandy.” 
I might as well have screamed into the 
face of a whirlwind. 

Then, in happy inspiration, I undertook 
a dumb show that I wanted drink for Miss 
Brandon, pointing to her as she lay in the 
chair where I had placed her, drawing my 
hand across my throat to indicate that it 
was dry, then raising imaginary bottles to 
my lips. I cannot think what she imag- 
ined, but her terror took a new and this 
time silent form. She ceased to shriek, 
but with a sudden rush of her bare toes 
across the floor, shot from my sight into a 
small closet or pantry, immediately slam- 
ming the door, and applying an eye at 
once to a good-sized knot-hole just above 
the knob. I suppose it was the state of 
my nerves, for I can make no one quite 
understand the feeling it gave me to know 
that the one staring eye was upon me and 
that, whichever way I turned, it would fol- 
90 


An Eventful Night 

low me — follow me as I moved Miss Bran- 
don in her chair nearer the smouldering 
fire, follow me while I wrapped the shawl 
about her and fiercely poked the sticks of 
sputtering wood. All the time there was 
a stealthy, rattling sound coming from the 
closet, which somehow bore in upon me the 
impression that with one long arm the 
woman was gradually raking everything 
movable within easy reach. Why, I could 
not guess, until happening near the door 
in my desperate search for drink, it was 
jerked open a few inches, and a tin skillet 
was flung at me through the aperture. 

‘‘ Stop that, woman! I called sternly, 
for, though the action had broken some- 
what the spell of that immovable eye, the 
situation was such a disgraceful one! 

‘‘ Then go ’way and lemme alone, or 
you’ll git the sad-irons next,” came the 
dogged answer, and I could hear her hard- 
drawn breath rushing through the keyhole. 

There was no time to be lost. I was 
meditating means of obtaining what I de- 
sired without misusing the woman, when 
91 


An Eventful Night 


a languid voice recalled me to Miss Bran- 
don’s side, and to my great relief I found 
her sitting up, wiping the blood from her 
face, and looking quite herself. ‘‘ Oh, do 
take me out of this horrid place,” she 
whispered fearfully, glancing at the closet 
door with such an expression of terror that 
I wondered if she, too, could feel that eye 
upon her. 

‘‘ I must get something to refresh you 
first, and something to carry us back to 
town,” I whispered in return, and then I 
advanced carelessly towards the door, only 
to be met with the promised “sad-iron,” 
hurled at me with a right good will. Evi- 
dently our hostess was determined I should 
parley with her only at a distance, and I 
saw that I must humour her, for a nerv- 
ous cry from Miss Brandon warned me to 
tamper no further with her overstrained 
nerves. 

“Madam,” I said pleasantly, retreating 
some steps and addressing myself strictly 
to the eye, which was again at its post, 
“could you make any use of a five-dollar 
93 


An Eventful Night 


bill?” And I ostentatiously flourished 
one before the knot-hole, then placed it 
carelessly on the table. There was a per- 
fect silence at this, and I produced a sec- 
ond. ‘‘ If so,” I said jauntily, “ you prob- 
ably might prefer two,” and I laid a second 
boldly beside the first. 

I was sure of the eye now; its greedy 
blink was not to be mistaken. A moment 
passed, then the eye drew back. Plates, 
cups, and other things rattled a retreat to 
the shelves; the door creaked upon its 
rusty hinges. First a head, and then a 
neck appeared, then shoulders, and finally 
the woman was before us again, entirely in 
her dress this time, and with a conscious- 
ness of her bare feet. She crouched down 
to cover them, which made her seem more 
feminine and approachable. 

My name is Brown,” she said solemnly. 
I saw that her right hand still clutched the 
meat knife, but I could not resent this. 

‘‘Mrs. Brown,” I murmured politely. 
So many people’s names seemed to be 
Brown that night. 


93 


An Eventful Night 


‘‘I am a widow,” she continued, in a 
sketchy, biographical style, with pauses 
for comments. 

‘‘Very sad, I’m sure,” I faltered. Her 
conversation began to sound rather in the 
matrimonial way, but I remembered my 
bandages in time to take no real alarm. 

“ My husband is dead,” she continued. 

“So I gathered,” I broke in hastily. 
“Can we have some wine or spirits of 
some kind for this young lady?” and I 
turned to Miss Brandon. 

At this Mrs. Brown came abruptly out 
of her reminiscent state and waxed curi- 
ous. “Are you running off with that 
girl ? ” she burst forth, jerking her thumb 
towards Miss Brandon, who turned very 
red, but looked, I realized with unreason- 
ing anger, more inclined to laugh than to 
cast down her eyes. 

“ She is my sister,” I said, looking the 
woman shamelessly in the eye, while I saw 
with a thrill at my heart that Miss Bran- 
don started and stared at me. Would it 
occur to her, then, that I felt she needed 
94 


An Eventful Night 


protection before the judgment of strangers 
in thus fearlessly flinging herself on my 
honour? The nobler side of me shrank 
from seeing her pretty head droop, and 
then turn away, while an irritable longing 
to feel myself regarded other than as a 
harmless watch-dog would jostle itself 
rudely to the front. 

Humph!” snorted the woman — 
snorted is the word — and then she eyed 
us fixedly. can’t say that you look 
much alike.” 

And yet I am a very handsome man 
without my bandages,” I said, bowing 
with ball-room gallantry to Miss Brandon. 
Then remembering how grotesque I must 
appear, all disguised as I was, with my 
woollen cap and swollen face, I straight- 
ened myself up stiffly, and cried out with 
sudden irritation for the wine. 

Although partially reassured, I think 
Mrs. Brown never wholly abandoned the 
idea that I was mad. I sat sullenly by 
until the drink was prepared, one of the 
women present watching me furtively, 
95 


An Eventful Night 


while the other and fairer one turned to 
me as to a handy man, some one who could 
fetch and carry, could be humbly useful at 
the wedding of a happier man, but never 
at all conspicuous, except at his own 
funeral. 

But hark! What was that? Was it 
only the wind which kept rustling to the 
door and away again? The window was 
rattling fiercely, or had I dozed ? “ There 

are men about,” I shouted, and was upon 
my feet to find Miss Brandon with her 
cheeks glowing from the wine and her 
eyes brimming with laughter, while Mrs. 
Brown, rigid with terror, was stiffly swal- 
lowing the bread and butter she had just 
spread for her guest. 

“Poor man!” cried Miss Brandon 
soothingly. “ You went right to sleep. 
It was too funny, but I wonder you didn’t 
jerk your poor head off. It was down so 
far and you brought it back so hard.” 

“ Crazy as a loon,” I heard Mrs. Brown 
mutter grimly, as she crept from behind 
the table where she had sprung. “ Drat 
96 


An Eventful Night 


him, and there I have eat all that bread ! 
My stomach will be as sour as vinegar.” 

“I want a horse,” I said coldly, “and 
something to ride in.” I longed to deny 
that I had been asleep, but dared not. 
Better asleep than insane, and I was near 
both. 

A faint gleam of hope lit the gaunt feat- 
ures of Mrs. Brown. There was, then, 
some prospect of being rid of us. “ I sup- 
pose he might use Cousin John’s horse,” 
she said, talking across to Miss Brandon, 
as one might discuss the beef tea of a pa- 
tient who is not to be reasoned with per- 
sonally. 

“ Cousin John or Cousin Jim, it’s all 
the same to me,” I cried recklessly, “so 
long as he can go.” 

“I’m sure I can’t say,” she retorted, 
eyeing me askance as she unhooked a 
smoky lantern from its peg. “I only 
know Cousin John fools away his time in 
the summer peddlin’ with him, then leaves 
him here to eat his head off in the winter. 
If I could only beef him he wouldn’t live 
7 97 


An Eventful Night 


a minute, I can tell you that! ” and open- 
ing the door, she led me forth into what 
seemed a wilderness of snow-filled kegs 
and boxes, all of which I am quite certain 
that I stepped into. I arrived at the small 
stable in no mood to endure the undigni- 
fied commotion set up by a roost of old 
hens and a solitary cock as we threw the 
light from our lantern in upon them. It 
was maddening, out upon a secret mission 
as we were, to note the zeal with which the 
cock set about his crowing, and to have the 
hens come squawking down as ready for 
the day’s engagement as though the morn- 
ing sun had tumbled bodily in upon them. 
Even Mrs. Brown found it trying, and 
cried tartly for the rooster to “shet his 
head,” as we fought our way through to 
the horse’s stall beyond. 

Accurately speaking, we found no horse, 
but lying prone on some musty hay we dis- 
covered a four-legged grey thing which, 
beyond snorting a trifie as Mrs. Brown 
thrust the lantern contemptuously under 
his nose, took no further notice of us. 

98 


An Eventful Night 


There he is/’ she said bitingly. Noth- 
in’ but a rat-hole to pour good oats into. 
He hasn’t had a bit between his teeth for 
two months, but you may take him and 
welcome.” 

After digging in vain about his bony 
frame for some trace of life and spirit, I 
was in despair, but I had no choice. To- 
gether we pried him from his ill-smelling 
bed, and he developed, as he slowly un- 
folded his joints, into a regular carcass of 
a horse, with great hollows which it would 
have taken the earnings of a whole race of 
peddlers to round out with high-priced 
hay. “Are you sure he is strong?” I 
gasped. “ Will he be up to a trip, you 
know ? It seems to me he looks awfully 
shaky.” 

She wouldn’t answer me, but kept on 
dragging out mouldy pieces of harness and 
moth-eaten robes, until I had an outfit the 
)r match for any rag-picker’s trap. 

“Heavens!” I moaned, as I mounted 
the sleigh, jerking at the rotten straps 
which were all the hold I had on that 
99 


An Eventful Night 


great brute. ‘^He has our lives in his 
hands. He couldn’t feel the strain of 
these lines if I were to drag them across 
his naked eye. Have you no respectable- 
looking ropes ? ” I called fretfully, re- 
solving to drop to even that for the sake 
of security. But Mrs. Brown was at the 
bottom of an old feed-box, and rose to the 
surface with such a disgraceful contrivance 
in the shape of a whip that I felt it would 
be madness to appeal to any sense of de- 
cency within her. 

Cautiously I steered my beast up to the 
door and left him in charge of Mrs. Brown, 
while I went inside for Miss Brandon. As 
I entered the house a clock struck two 
clattering strokes. ‘‘And to think,” I 
exclaimed absently, “ that I dined with 
Flo last night at six! ” 

The statement bore in upon me no im- 
pression of the truth after I had made it, 
but it startled Miss Brandon to hear me 
talking to myself, so I told her I had asked 
if she was feeling any stronger. It seemed 
human to retain her confidence in my san- 
100 


An Eventful Night 

ity, my own faith in it was so badly 
shaken. 

“ And now you’re off,” cried Mrs. Brown 
joyfully a few minutes later, as I cracked 
the whip over the back of Cousin John’s 
nag. 

And as a matter of fact we were off even 
as she said it — the horse off the road, strad- 
dling about with its foot through an ash- 
barrel, and I off the seat with my toboggan 
cap off my head and filled to the brim with 
snow. 

Both women screamed, of course. I 
picked myself up, seized the horse by the 
bit, forced him to kick himself loose from 
the barrel, and then we really were off, 
with but one more brief delay while I 
pressed into the half -frozen fingers of Mrs. 
Brown a third bill sufficiently large to 
cover the loss of our outfit should it never 
return to her. 

Mrs. Brown had assured us that for sev- 
eral miles the road could be travelled blind- 
folded. ‘‘ You see, you got clean off the 
trail tumblin’ down that caflon,” she had 
101 


An Eventful Night 


explained irritably, ‘‘an’ have got to feel 
your way back to the main travelled path. 
But just go slow, an’ give the critter the 
lines, an’ you can’t run into nothin’ else.” 
And as it was perfectly black overhead, 
and not much better under foot, and the 
lines must inevitably burst under the 
slightest pressure, there seemed nothing 
for it but to put our united fates into the 
keeping of the animal’s instincts. 

Cowering and shrinking, I silently 
whipped my chilled fingers and stamped 
on my hardening toes, knowing all the 
time that I ought to be one of the most 
wretched creatures living, yet conscious of 
a sneaking delight in my false position, a 
rascally pleasure when the soft fur sleeve 
next me brushed my icy hand, which had 
nothing to do with my physical comfort in 
touching something warm. I think that 
I would have been content to drive on that 
way all night, not speaking at all, but sit- 
ting there, half frozen and wholly irra- 
tional, dreaming foolish dreams. But sud- 
denly down went the curtain with a crash 
102 


An Eventful Night 


upon perfumed knight and smiling lady, 
and up it rose on me, the married man, 
the trusty doctor. ‘‘Oh!” my compan- 
ion hurst out suddenly, turning her face 
towards me, though in that light I could 
see nothing of it hut a white blur, “lam 
sure no father could have been kinder to 
me than you have been to-night, and that, 
too, without knowing my story. Why 
don’t you ask me about myself ? ” 

Swallowing the “father” like quinine 
which has stuck in the throat, I suggested 
faintly that there had been no time, but 
no sooner did my voice break the silence 
than she stopped me with a nervous start. 
“ I wonder why I don’t like to talk with 
you so well in the dark,” she said uneasily. 
“ I haven’t seen your poor face really, it’s 
been done up so; but, somehow, when I 
can’t see your bandages you seem so differ- 
ent. Your voice is so — I don’t know what 
you’d call it, hut it seems so changed.” 

“ I’m getting a cold in my head,” I said 
firmly. I could not hear the sudden trem- 
bling in her voice. 


103 


An Eventful Night 


She should not fear me if I had to go 
down to the grave and live there in her 
memory as an old fellow with full-grown 
girls dependent on him. “ Oh, is that it ? 
How funny!” she exclaimed with a re- 
lieved laugh. ‘‘But now I am going to 
tell you all about myself,” and she settled 
down for narrative with a delightful little 
flutter which brought her warm garments 
brushing against my chilled limbs like 
something living. 

“Just as you think best,” I murmured, 
though I felt morally certain that if she 
should confess that the whole escapade 
was planned in a fit of rage because the 
proper kind of stufl for an evening gown 
had been denied her, I should swear she 
was justified. 

“You see,” she began, Avith a little 
sigh, “ it all came about through that hor- 
rid will of papa’s.” 

“ Oh! ” I said vacantly. 

“Yes,” she went on with relish, “and 
don’t you think wills are nearly always 
horrid ? They’re made, you know, mostly 
104 


An Eventful Night 


when people are sick and not quite right 
in their heads, and then how is any one to 
he argued with after he is dead and gone ? 
Oh, I’m all against wills,” and she shook 
her head severely. 

‘‘ They certainly do stir up a great deal 
of ill-feeling,” I stammered, seeing that 
she expected me to say something. 

And papa was so awfully good and all 
that, that he couldn’t be got to see that 
others weren’t all like him,” she went on 
hurriedly. ‘‘ So when his heart got to act- 
ing so queer, he just made his will, leaving 
me and my property all in uncle’s hands, 
for mamma had been dead ever so long, 
and then he died that night, and it’s all 
gone wrong ever since, and I presume I’ve 
had about as dry a time of it as almost 
anybody you can think of.” 

“ Dry! ” I exclaimed ; it was really the 
first word that had caught my attention. 
I gave the will less than no thought at all. 
What had a ranch or two more or less to 
do with such eyes as hers ? 

‘‘Yes, dry,” she repeated firmly, “for 
105 


An Eventful Night 


you see there was another funny thing 
about this will that I haven’t mentioned 
yet, and that’s the reason I came to be 
brought up in a convent.” 

In a convent,” I repeated feebly. 

‘‘ Yes, in a convent,” she said tragi- 
cally, taking my horror for granted. 
‘‘Perfectly horrid, wasn’t it? But, of 
course, as I was to marry whom I pleased, 
that was about the only safe place for them 
to put me. I wouldn’t be likely to want 
to marry a priest, now would I ? ” 

“I should rather think not!” I ex- 
claimed with unnecessary energy, com- 
pletely roused. “ What do you mean by 
marrying any one you pleased? I don’t 
in the least understand you.” 

“ I think, myself, that that is the funny 
part of it,” she cried amiably, evidently 
pleased with my growing interest; “and I 
don’t wonder you are surprised; but you 
see, papa had had such a dreadful time of 
it getting mamma — something or other was 
the matter with some land that belonged 
to their grandfathers — that it had given 
106 


An Eventful Night 


him a hobby about people being crossed in 
love, and that’s how it came about that he 
put such a queer thing in his will. 

‘‘ I was to marry whom I pleased, and if 
I did marry, I was to have my property 
and use it as I pleased; but if I didn’t 
marry. Uncle Hobart was to take care of 
me and all my money until I was twenty- 
one, and that’s going to be next week.” 

^‘Hext week! So soon?” I cried in 
surprise, for the wonder of her flight, 
when escape was so near, almost formed 
itself into words upon my lips. 

‘‘Soon — so soon!” she cried, and now 
with real anger in her voice, though not, 
I felt, against me. “ It may seem soon to 
you, but it will be just six days too late, 
and then all my years of horrid old dresses 
in the convent, no parties, nor jewels, nor 
anything nice, will be for nothing; for I 
must either marry Cousin Harold at the 
end of this week, or Uncle Hobart will sell 
my mines before I can come of age, and 
then deny I ever had any, or will claim 
that they are the ones that turned out 
107 


An Eventful Night 


badly, though they weren’t mine at all, 
but his. Yes,” she cried, defiantly facing 
me, I don’t deny that I have listened at 
key-holes, and pried into letters, and done 
lots of dreadful things to find all this out; 
but I’ve had my disposition just ruined by 
being kept mewed up all these years. How 
I used to rage when I could feel myself 
getting more and more poky, and then to 
have only a few dollars doled out to me at 
a time, when I knew that Cousin Harold, 
whom I just hate, was spending all my 
money, and putting off marrying me until 
the last moment, because I had been shut 
up in a convent until I was a perfect 
dowdy,” and here she broke down in an- 
gry tears, while I sat a statue of fear and 
longing — longing to comfort and protect 
her as no staid, middle-aged doctor would 
be supposed to comfort a young and help- 
less woman, and fear lest the stern self- 
control I had been able so far to exercise 
should break down utterly under the strain 
of that low sobbing. 

‘‘My dear Miss Brandon,” I said, low 
108 


An Eventful Night 

and hurriedly, ‘‘ calm yourself, I beg. Are 
you quite, quite certain about that will? 
Certain that you were left free to marry 
whom you choose ? ” 

Oh, yes, indeed, I should think I am,” 
she burst out indignantly. ‘‘ Why, it was 
for that reason and no other that I was 
kept mewed up in that stuffy old convent 
all those years, and never a man to look at 
but priests and some old things that did 
work about the grounds! ” 

It is pitiful to confess that I winced at 
this. It did not please me that she should 
ever have wished to meet other men, and 
when you recall that she had never really 
seen me and had only looked upon me as 
a married person with a swollen eye, you 
will wonder at my folly. ‘‘What right 
had you to want to see men? ” I wanted 
to ask her hotly, but instead I cried softly : 
“ Hark ! I hear horses’ feet behind. They 
are coming fast. Do you hear them ? ” 
This dried her stormy tears at once, and 
breathlessly we sat and listened. Yes, I 
was right. From far up the steep road 
109 


An Eventful Night 


there came to us swift, hard strokes, break- 
ing startlingly upon the silence and filling 
us with chill premonition of pursuit and 
capture when our victory seemed all but 
accomplished. “ They are following us,” 
my companion whispered fearfully, creep- 
ing nearer to my side and resting there 
tremblingly. They will not let me go. 
I know it. To-morrow my uncle was to 
meet some men and finish the sale of my 
mines which have turned out to be full of 
something. They will kill us if they find 
us here. Oh, what shall we do ? ” 

What should we do, indeed? At that 
moment, as if to increase our perplexities, 
the moon, which had been hiding all night 
beneath a blanket of clouds, burst sud- 
denly forth, clothed in glistening gar- 
ments, which lighted every nook and 
cranny of the rugged scenery about us. 
Far above towered the snowy peaks, while 
away down below, a dim radiance, nestling 
close like a circlet of gems against the 
earth’s dark line, the lights of the city 
lay. Above and below us stretched a tor- 
110 


An Eventful Night 


tuous path upon which impatient hoofs 
were beating not many rods behind; and 
we — what could we do, all unarmed as we 
were, and at the mercy of an ancient beast 
whose every motion seemed wrung from 
him in bitter pain ? 

‘‘ Oh, you do not know my uncle! We 
are lost! ” came in an awed whisper close 
beside me, and then a great desperation 
fell upon me. The road to the city 
stretched before us. Inside that city there 
was justice to be had; help, at least. Then 
reach that city we must before those fleet 
hoofs behind had tracked us down. With 
a spring I reached my feet, and folding the 
useless lash about the whip-stalk I held, 
I brought it down upon the back of the 
horse before me with all the energy of a 
despairing man’s last effort. ‘‘Go!” I 
cried in a voice of thunder, then sank hack 
crushed with the certainty of defeat, while 
nearer and yet nearer came those ringing 
footfalls, and a distant shout told us that 
our black shape on the moonlit track was 
already clear to our pursuers. 

Ill 


An Eventful Night 


But what was this ? What magic had 
that whip-stalk held ? What fire had my 
hoarse cry infused into the huge frame be- 
fore me ? Or was it those clattering hoofs 
behind ? Was the instinct of some ancient 
courser trembling through those starting 
veins, and pricking up with long-buried fire 
the dull ears drooping beneath their rusty 
harness ? Scarce had that cry behind 
ceased echoing when the huge bulk of 
horsefiesh before us began to tremble with 
the workings of some hidden passion. 
Slowly did the great head uplift itself, the 
great chest expand, and then, with a 
bound which, but for my too ready arm, 
must have fiung my companion from the 
seat, the beast sprang forward, swinging 
us and the rickety old sleigh behind him 
with as much unconcern as though we 
were so many wisps of straw. 

“Now may Heaven help us, I can do no 
more!” I gasped, guarding the useless 
lines with care for that awful moment 
which I felt must come, when the varia- 
tion of a hair’s breadth might save us from 
112 


An Eventful Night 

some horrid death. Death! Why, the 
thing seemed simple. The only question 
was how to die. Every avenue was open, 
hut since my remains might be recovered 
by my sorrowing friends, I yearned for a 
more symmetrical end than to go crashing 
down over jagged rocks into some bottom- 
less abyss. 

And now another shout from behind 
reached us. Faster and faster came the 
pursuing feet, while the great hulk before 
us worked its starting joints as though 
lightning itself were playing fast and loose 
inside them. Great clods of snow dug up 
by clattering shoes rained thickly about 
us, and struck upon our smarting cheeks. 
“The shoes themselves will be coming 
next,’’ I groaned, crouching low, as my 
teeth grated upon the sand left from a 
mouthful of the snow and ice. 

Would he, could he make it ? Nearer, 
nearer yet those feet seemed coming. 
Would bullets be whistling next in the 
frosty hail about us? “Cling to my 
arm!” I cried in my companion’s ear, 
8 113 


An Eventful Night 


and then I half-rose to my feet and looked 
behind, only to be brought down upon a 
pair of bruised knees as our racing steed 
took a small boulder at a single leap. 

‘‘One more such trick and we are lost,” 
I muttered between my teeth, and then 
we struck a smoother track, and I climbed 
upon the seat again, to meet, as I did so, a 
glance from Miss Brandon’s dark eyes, 
shining and dilating in the moonlight un- 
til I lost all reason and strange visions 
seized upon me. 

“Miss Brandon,” I whispered, and my 
voice sounded far off to my own hearing, 
“if you were married, if you had a hus- 
band to protect you, you need not fear 
those men behind ? ” 

She sighed impatiently. “ Of course 
not,” she said hurriedly. “But there’s 
no use talking about it now, for they’ll 
catch us; oh, they will surely catch us! ” 
and she clung to me as a louder shout 
reached us. 

“Listen to me,” I whispered, taking 
her cold hands in mine boldly now, for 
114 


An Eventful Night 

that I meant her well God he my witness. 
‘‘ A week from now you will be free, you 
will need no one’s aid, but to-night, but 
now, let me protect you. For a few short 
hours be my wife in the sight of the law, 
and I swear you shall be to me a young 
and reverenced sister,” and involuntarily 
I bared my head before her. 

Ah, if I could have spoken in my own 
name and language then; but what a fig- 
ure I must have cut. She might have 
laughed aloud as I crouched before her, 
disguised and disfigured as I was, but she 
only shrank from me. “ Marry you ! ’ ’ she 
gasped. ‘‘Are you not married already, 
then ? Oh, I was sure that you were mar- 
ried. What must you think of me, what 
must you! ” 

“ I — I have been married,” I stammered, 
pitying her so in her shame and loneliness 
that I made nothing of my continued per- 
fidy. “ But my wife is dead. You have 
no need to fear me. Eemember how young 
you seem to me. Look up, and see that 
you can trust me.” 


115 


An Eventful Night 


As I pleaded with her the sleigh plunged 
on at the heels of that dreadful animal. 
Down and down the frightful grade we 
went, but he made nothing of it. Half 
the time we seemed perched upon his very 
haunches. Slowly the girl lifted her bowed 
head, and timidly she looked at me — at 
what she could see of me — and how I 
blessed then those hated bandages. Had 
she seen that I was young, that every pulse 
was tingling with a devotion beyond the 
power of reasoning age to feel, who can 
tell what might have followed. But, as it 
was, something in the swollen eye she 
studied seemed to bring comfort to her 
heart. She smiled, and although at that 
moment we took a stone the size of a din- 
ner-table under our left runner, I never 
even felt the dull shock. 

“It would be awfully funny,” she fal- 
tered. “I hate to lose all my money be- 
fore I’ve ever had a diamond necklace, or 
been abroad, and — and — afterwards ” 

“And afterwards,” I cried with my 
head whirling rapidly, though my voice 
116 


An Eventful Night 

sounded paternal and reassuring still — 
“ afterwards the law which has helped me 
to preserve for you your property shall give 
you back your liberty, and may Heaven 
bless you for your sweet trust in me.’^ 

And now go, old horse, go ! Go, go, and 
may you yet, with Cousin John ” upon 
your back, canter into the very heart of 
Paradise. Half -standing, half -sit ting, cau- 
tiously did I ply the whip. With line and 
voice I sought to guide his headlong charge; 
every nerve on fire, every pulse throbbing, 
wild with anxiety, lest one false step waken 
me from my dream of bliss. 

And now lights from countless gambling 
dens, lights from sick-rooms, and the lights 
from distant streets came plainly to us. 
Go, go ! And go he did, with great lunges 
of his awkward legs, and now and then a 
threatening snort which told of straining 
lungs gasping forth a vigorous protest or 
reproach. Half a mile, only a quarter 
now, and still those galloping feet behind. 

Oh, for a dark alley into which we might 
plunge! See, there it yawns before us. 

117 


An Eventful Night 


Now, one burst of speed, and we go crash- 
ing through a heap of rubbish, and breath- 
less and panting, the knees of the horse 
bending beneath him, we spring out into 
a dark and loathsome alley, and with a 
“ God bless thee, old nag! ” and a pat on 
his reeking flanks, I flung a coin into the 
face of a man who started up from a door- 
step, and cried: Oats for that horse and 
a drink for yourself I ” 

And then what a chase began ! A chase 
joined in by every homeless dog and va- 
grant cat we started from their unclean 
lairs, while drunken revellers hailed us 
with coarse jests as we flashed across their 
paths, and twice I fancied that the gleam- 
ing muzzle of a firearm threatened us from 
a dark retreat. But so rapid was our 
flight as I half -led, half -carried my trem- 
bling companion through the horrid tan- 
gle, we must have seemed to all we met as 
illusive as the shifting night shades, now 
and again trembling for a second between 
them and the moon’s pale light. At last 
the air about us began to freshen, and with 
118 


An Eventful Night 


a great gasp of relief and exultation I drew 
my companion into a decent thoroughfare, 
and, with anxious glances, sought for some 
sign which would lead me to what I most 
needed. 

There is no time to be lost, not one sec- 
ond. I must ask directions, hut of whom ? 
Yonder, with stately step, comes a starred 
and coated oiSicer of the law, and I shrink 
back and let him pass as though the weight 
of crime was pressing down upon my soul. 
Despair seizes on me; but hark, there are 
other feet! And see, there comes a be- 
lated traveller of respectable mien, a fam- 
ily man, long overdue at the domestic 
hearth, I would take my oath. I could 
read the signs of a mild debauch and guilty 
dread in his feverish haste and in the 
craven fear which lit his eye. “Sir!” I 
exclaimed, forgetting caution and spring- 
ing so suddenly before him that he threw 
up his hand as though sandbagging were 
his nightly cross. “ I beg your pardon,” 
I said humbly, seeing how it was with him, 
and then I asked for what I wanted, and 
119 


An Eventful Night 


poured out into his reluctant ear such a 
tale of love and romance that, had he con- 
tained a divine fire, he must inevitably 
have burst into fiame on the spot. As it 
was, however, he stood and eyed me with 
a cold, dull eye, an eye filmy from loss of 
sleep, a suspicious eye, that did not twin- 
kle at my amorous tale, and when I had 
finished, said merely: ‘‘You have been 
fighting, I see,” and looked at my band- 
ages with a self-righteous air which sat ill 
on so belated a reveller. 

“And how could it be otherwise?” I 
asked plaintively. “I could not get her 
peaceably. ’ ’ For I had mixed up a roman- 
tic elopement with certain elements of 
highway robbery until I thought the tale 
sufficiently highly spiced. “ But I beg of 
you, do not detain me. Surely you can 
direct me to the proper officer without 
suffering any strain upon your principles.” 

Coldly again did his dull eye scan me, 
up and down and all about, to rest at last 
upon the diamond scarf-pin I wore. “ I 
am a jeweller,” he remarked at last indif- 
120 


An Eventful Night 


ferently, but his eye spoke for him with 
an eloquence I did not attempt to mis- 
understand. 

‘‘Indeed,” I exclaimed joyously, “if 
that he the case, perhaps you can estimate 
for me the value of this bauble,” and I 
plucked ofE the gem, forcing it upon him 
with an arch and meaning glance, while 
I secretly yearned to boot him for a cut- 
throat. But no sooner had the thing been 
done than I found the price beggarly com- 
pared with the comfort it brought to my 
jaded energies. I was no longer a rudder- 
less ship drifting about at the mercy of 
every capricious wave. I was an impor- 
tant event, something with a purpose, a 
man who paid his way. 

I would give a connected account of the 
next hour’s work were the thing possible, 
but so confused are the real events in my 
mind with certain vague imaginings that 
I dare not vouch for what might be called 
the plain facts. We walked, I should say, 
a great number of miles, though they have 
been reduced by some to barely as many 
121 


An Eventful Night 


blocks, and stopped at several houses where 
people, men mostly, in night-caps, I think, 
though I will not insist on the night-caps, 
came and peered at us through cracks 
in doors, and swore at us first, and then 
talked more mildly, and at most of the 
houses I kept telling my name until they 
stopped me, and had me sign it to papers, 
which I did with pens as large as walking 
sticks. 

I know for a certainty that I kept pay- 
ing out money, but probably not in the 
quantities it seemed, for my bankers tell 
me I had drawn no thousand-dollar bank- 
notes, nor bags of silver dollars, and then 
walked again, and more men in night-caps 
came and looked at us, and I told my story 
to some, and to some I didn’t, until sud- 
denly I came to myself in a dusty little 
parlour before a man in a dress-coat and felt 
boots, who was saying to me as well as he 
could with a bad cold in his head, I pro- 
nounce you man and wife.” I was stand- 
ing holding fast to Miss Brandon’s hand, 
and the knowledge that she was no longer 
123 


An Eventful Night 


Miss Brandon was tingling through my 
senses. My wife — for she was my wife in 
the eyes of the men who stood staring won- 
deringly at me — gave a frightened little 
cry, tottered for an instant, and then fell 
fainting into arms, so white, so wan, so 
childlike that I thought we had killed her 
somehow with our clumsy doings. Snatch- 
ing her up, I dashed out into the hall with 
her, where my sudden entrance scared up 
a covey of half -dressed women, who made 
a rush for the stairs, but finding they 
couldn’t make it, turned and defiantly 
faced me. 

‘‘Show me a room!” I shouted, and 
they fled before me like rats, until, fol- 
lowing their scant skirts, I found myself 
standing before a clean, but tumbled bed, 
from which the scared occupant had just 
sprung to secrete herself behind a half- 
open closet door. Here I tenderly placed 
my charge, and, with one more look at her 
wan face, I fled from the apartment, shut- 
ting the door upon her and the women, 
and then I crouched close beside it, wild 
123 


An Eventful Night 


with fear lest a cry of horror reach me at 
any moment to tell me that life had fled. 

Nor from that lowly post could I be up- 
rooted, though the hole was dark and the 
women, running in and out, stumbled 
against me as they ran, spilling things 
over themselves and me. At last one of 
the lot came and stood before me, with 
arms akimbo, her face shining with good- 
natured scorn. Six months from now 
you’ll take things more easy,” she said. 

‘‘ And the lady, how is she ? ” I cried. 

“The lady?” she repeated wonder- 
ingly; “your wife, you mean,” and then, 
for I reddened furiously beneath my band- 
ages, she laughed and cried: “Why, the 
man is blushing. You better go and shave 
yourself,” she cried jocosely, “you are no 
fit sight for so pretty a little runaway. 
Leave her to me, and brush up, or she’ll 
be more than ready to run back with papa 
when he gets here.” 

There was good sense in this, and I crept 
down-stairs, and meeting in the hall my 
gentleman of the diamond pin, asked him 
124 


An Eventful Night 


shamefacedly where I might obtain at once 
a bath, a change of clothing, and a shave. 

Again was I led forth, and once more 
we were knocking at people’s doors, and 
once more did surly men peer at us through 
stingy little chinks, and, by and by, a half- 
dressed barber stood before us, mixing up 
cold lather, and stropping a razor with a 
sleepy blindness far from reassuring. 

“ You’ll have to get off them rags,” he 
said, with unnecessary rudeness, pointing 
to my bandages, and then he stripped them 
from me with no gentle hand, and fell at 
his work. 

“Be careful of that jaw,” I said heav- 
ily, and then I think that I must have 
gone to sleep, for, though I remember his 
asking me snappishly, “Which jaw?” I 
remember nothing else until a sudden ap- 
plication of bay rum to a cheek all but 
freed of skin brought me to myself with 
a moan of pain. 

“ Whatever have you had them rags on 
for ? ” was the greeting of my tormentor, 
as he hastily covered the evidence of his 
125 


An Eventful Night 


brutality with a dab of powder, and then 
my eyes, straying about in sleepy wonder, 
fell upon my reflection in the long glass 
before me. What, indeed? Why, I was 
myself again ! How long had I been mas- 
querading unnecessarily in those band- 
ages ? W'hy, even my swollen eye, though 
a thought heavy about the upper lid, wore 
only a look of interesting melancholy. 

I could have sung for joy. I sprang to 
my feet with such an expression of artless 
delight on my face that the man demanded 
four times the usual rate on the spot. 
“It’s too much to be expected to climb 
out at this hour and sharpen up extra for 
what one would get at mid-day when the 
trade is driving,” he said, in excuse of his 
robbery, but I took him so pleasantly that 
he quite bestirred himself when he got to 
my hair, and when I mentioned, with an 
attempt at gaiety, that I was without hat 
or coat, he offered to drum up a friend of 
his who kept a clothing store a little far- 
ther down the street. 

“ Let’s be off,” I cried like one leading 
126 


An Eventful Night 


a charge of cavalry. Half an hour later I 
was so completely metamorphosed that the 
lady who had recommended the change did 
not know me when I rushed in upon her, 
until I broke forth into a storm of inquiries 
as to the state of the invalid I had left in 
her charge. 

“ Oh, is it you, then ! ” she cried, 
throwing her fat hands in the air, while 
her eyebrows sought out her oily hair once 
more. “ Well, well ! So that’s why she 
ran away from home, was it ! A good eye 
and a neat moustache will make a fool of 
any girl that breathes, I see, and her home 
is no better than the dirt she walks on.” 

‘‘Where is she?” I cried, for I was 
burning to display myself before her with- 
out my former dismal trappings. Of 
course, I should have remembered how she 
had learned to regard me — that she was 
weak, tired, and in a situation of the ut- 
most delicacy, and in a manner I did ; but 
how, without raising fatal suspicions, could 
I refuse to enter when the attendant 
pointed to the parlour and said my “ bride ” 
127 


An Eventful Night 


was in there? I might, however, have 
gone in more slowly; might have followed 
up my timid knock, which brought a 
smothered chuckle from behind me, with 
less speed; but as it was, I was inside the 
door, and on my knees beside the chair in 
which she sat, pouring out a stream of in- 
quiries, regrets, and congratulations before 
I noticed that she was not listening to me, 
but had drawn herself back from me as 
from a wild beast, and was regarding me 
in a pallid horror which struck me to the 
heart. 

Why, don’t you know me ? ” I cried, 
in pity and reproach, at which her face 
turned crimson, then went down upon the 
arm of her chair, and she burst into tears 
with such an abandonment of grief that I 
was beside myself. 

“ Oh, forgive me, forgive me! ” I cried, 
though I was not conscious of having 
sinned against her. But she only shook 
her head, and bade me leave her, and, as 
I could not do that, I dropped into hope- 
less silence, regarding the crown of fluffy 
138 


An Eventful Night 


hair, which was all I could see, in helpless 
misery, until gradually about an inch of 
her white forehead began to show itself 
above the handkerchief she was clutching, 
and a desperate voice said: “How could 
you be so young — so awfully young, and 
all that? It’s just— just too dreadful for 
anything.” 

“ I know it,” I said meekly, though I 
did not think it dreadful at all. “But 
you know all this is just for a little while. 
I only stayed to make you understand that. 
I will leave you now, if you prefer it.” 

There was a silence, then she reached 
her hand cautiously towards me, still with 
her face concealed behind the handker- 
chief. 

“ I am not angry with you,” she said 
timidly. “ And if you had been old, you 
know, come to think about it, you couldn t 
have got about so. Perhaps it’s best this 
way, after all.” 

“ Perhaps it is,” I murmured gravely, 
barely touching the dainty fingers, then 
laying them discreetly down again, while 
9 139 


An Eventful Night 


my traitor heart leaped high and mad fan- 
cies possessed my brain. And then, to re- 
assure her, for I cared little enough about 
it myself, I began to talk to her of her 
business complications, artfully rousing in 
her the resentment against her uncle of 
which I had caught a glimpse; and so, 
little by little, winning her to look at me 
and trust me as I sat down back from her, 
not trusting myself in the least, and very 
much fearing that some hasty word or ac- 
tion might drop again the veil which seemed 
lifting from between her soul and mine. 

“ Oh, how can I ever thank you 
enough ? ” she cried at length. And to 
think that you are about the first honest 
man I ever talked to, though, I suppose,” 
she added hastily, “ that the priests must 
be all right, being in the church and all 
that, but then you know they have to be 
so queer, that it doesn’t seem to matter 
whether they are or not; one doesn’t care 
much, you know.” 

Well, they would not let us alone, so we 
had some breakfast — the usual thing, I 
130 


An Eventful Night 


suppose, for I remember being asked 
whether I would take cream in my coffee, 
and declining it, then wondering why the 
stuff tasted wrong and wasn’t the right 
colour; and something about being asked 
if the steak suited me, and that I answered 
dreamily that it did not, at which people 
looked offended. Little could be expected 
of one sitting down in family fashion with 
a blushing girl, who kept her eyes fast- 
ened questioningly upon him whenever she 
thought herself unobserved, and who fal- 
tered out little womanly proffers of deli- 
cacies that led him to pile his untouched 
plate with incongruous eatables. 

A carriage was got for us by some one, 
and I paid out more money, almost my 
last. Then we were directed to a down- 
town law office; arrived indecently early, 
and were received by a janitor much out 
of temper from an encounter with the 
furnace, and I was snubbed by him and 
frowned upon; and when the lawyer came 
I left my companion in the reception-room, 
and went into the inner office with him, 
131 


An Eventful Night 


wishing devoutly that I might have sought 
my brother-in-law’s advice as to the kind 
of help to employ in my delicate business, 
yet not daring to venture near him, as I 
valued my liberty. 

Too utterly jaded to use my ordinary 
tact, I did not decently prepare the poor 
man. While I pelted him with my wild 
statements, he sat far forward upon the 
edge of his office chair, with one eye upon 
the window beside him, making ready, I 
felt, for that moment when my lunacy 
should break loose and he must leap for 
his life. But, though clumsy to the verge 
of brutality, I was firm with him, and 
nothing he could say shook my confidence 
in my reason, or the reality of what had 
happened. So gradually he left off his 
feverish attention to the window and be- 
gan to really heed me. But when I reached 
that strange morning wedding, he sprang 
to his feet and snatched the papers per- 
taining to the ceremony from me, much 
as one would seize a loaded revolver from 
the hands of a child . 

133 


An Eventful Night 

Our names he took down, and then my 
companion must be brought in and ques- 
tioned, and when he had cross-examined 
her until the toe of my boot fairly tingled, 
he bundled us both out of the office, tell- 
ing us when to call again, all the time mut- 
tering to himself as though his nervous 
system had sustained a severe shock. 

Once more in the carriage, what was I 
to do ? We could not ride all day. Should 
I take my companion straightway and place 
her in my sister’s care ? Not for all the 
world, until the mystery surrounding her 
could be cleared up. 

What, then? Timidly I turned and 
looked at her, but nothing was to be got 
from that, save the disconcerting percep- 
tion that she, too, felt the awkwardness of 
our situation, was crushed beneath it, and 
cowered away from me, her head turned 
aside and her whole attitude one of com- 
plete prostration. 

Well,” said I briskly, as my eyes noted 
this, we will drive to a hotel, where you 
may rest,” and, pretending I had forgot- 
133 


An Eventful Night 


ten something, I ran and conferred with 
the driver as to some quiet retreat, the 
name of which he gave with a leer, so that 
I climbed back beside my companion, 
filled with vengeful longings, which were 
augmented when I detected my bride in 
the act of studying me from beneath her 
lashes, and saw that, far from comforting 
her, the survey of my person seemed to fill 
her mind with renewed consternation. 

Miss Brandon,” I cried softly, a whole 
world of respect and compassion ringing 
in my voice, and then I remembered that 
she was no longer Miss Brandon, and she 
remembered it too, and the good work 
was all undone. Up rushed the scarlet to 
my face, and to hers too, poor girl, and 
with a childish motion she pressed one 
hand across her face to conceal it from me. 

“ It’s going to be a chilly day,” I gasped 
with an attempt at unconsciousness she 
could not second, and so we sat in a silence 
awful to her I knew, while my heart 
thumped away at my side like a hammer. 

No sooner had the carriage stopped than 
134 


An Eventful Night 


she was upon her feet with down-bent 
head, and I had scarcely time to get the 
door open and be ready to receive her be- 
fore she slipped down, avoiding my ex- 
tended arms, and stood beside me like a 
bird ready for flight. 

Good-bye,” she murmured feverishly, 
“you don’t need to come in with me. I 
can take care of myself now,” with a little 
catch in her voice. She would have been 
gone, but forgetting where I was, I caught 
her hand and made her raise her eyes to 
mine. “ Oh, forgive me,” she faltered, 

“ you have been so kind, but ” 

“ But I shall not obey you now,” I fln- 
ished for her flrmly, and then I dropped 
her hand, for I saw that the driver was 
fairly feasting his vulgar curiosity on our 
little scene. I saw something else, too, 
with a sudden sickening chill at my heart. 
An elegant private carriage containing two 
ladies was being drawn up with a flourish 
beside us. In one of those ladies I recog- 
nized my sister, while in the other I dis- 
covered, with a sense of being caught up 
135 


An Eventful Night 


in the grasp of a whirling maelstrom, the 
most yielding of the fair creatures to whom 
I had been paying idle court since my ar- 
rival at my sister’s home. They had seen 
me, but not my companion ; for, as I had 
said before, I am large, and I was standing 
before her. They had seen me, and were 
hot after me, and my friend was smiling 
upon me with gay indulgence. 

The coachman from his elevated seat had 
also seen me, and seen not only me, but 
my companion, and I thought there was 
pity in his glance as he reined in his horses 
close beside us — so close that before my 
mind could act both ladies saw I was not 
alone, but saw it too late to draw back. 
The half-reproached, half-relieved greet- 
ing already framed upon my sister’s lips 
froze into a little frosty nod, while a deli- 
cate flush of shame and outraged confi- 
dence spread itself over her handsome fea- 
tures. Her friend sat like flesh and blood 
turned of a sudden into an excellent qual- 
ity of granite, while not the faintest trace 
of pity gleamed from the four eyes turned 
136 


An Eventful Night 

haughtily upon the shrinking figure beside 
me. 

I had stood so much that I think I had 
little reason left; besides, although I knew 
the circumstances were against me, I was 
a little indignant, which still further 
blinded me. So without a thought of 
their amazement, indeed with scarcely a 
consciousness of the thunderbolt I was 
levelling at their heads, I took my com- 
panion’s hand and led her a little forward, 
remarking in a perfectly vacant manner : 

Oh, how do you do, Flo ? Let me make 
you acquainted with my wife. And Miss 
Thompson, also, I should like to have you 
meet my wife. Pleasant morning, isn’t 
it?” And then, utterly apathetic from 
despair, I stood and stared listlessly. 

I have always admired women, but the 
conduct of the outraged Miss Thompson 
at that moment moved me to such intem- 
perate wonder that, with the insane ten- 
dency one has to grasp at trifles in mo- 
ments of peril, I thought for a moment of 
nothing else save the sudden glittering 
137 


An Eventful Night 


composure which fell down over and stayed 
about her as the fatal words slipped past 
my babbling lips. Not the shriek of my 
sister in that public place, nor the violent 
start and reproachful cry of my wife, had 
power for that moment to rouse me. 

“ Well, really now, quite abrupt and the- 
atrical, I do declare! ” cried Miss Thomp- 
son, while every other mortal on the spot 
was tongue-tied with horror. ‘‘And to 
think, Flo, that you lost a night’s sleep 
worrying over such a refreshingly roman- 
tic creature! I would tear my hair just a 
little, my dear, if I were you. Of course, 
I should recommend the greatest discretion 
while you’re about it.” 

When one looked from the pitiful, 
frightened face of the child beside me to 
the chill, white face of Flo, glaring down 
at us from the carriage door, this rattling 
talk sounded like profanity, and yet I did 
not blame Miss Thompson. At heart I 
was guiltless, yet I cowered beneath the 
glitter of her eye as though confronted 
with actual bigamy. I have said before 
138 


An Eventful Night 

that Flo is a good woman. She is. She 
is more. She is a great woman, and at 
that trying moment she proved as much. 
After all was said and done, I was her 
brother, and my honour was her honour. 

I am very glad to meet your wife, I 
am sure,” she at length gasped out, with 
a smile which must have come much harder 
than the last defiance of many a well-baked 
martyr. “Do get in and come with us, 
both of you. I was on the way to the 
morgue to identify you, but we will drive 
home now.” 

It sounded suspiciously friendly, but I 
was looking for floating straws, and I 
turned to assist my trembling charge in 
beside the others. 

“Forgive me,” I whispered, as I half- 
lifted her upon the cushions; but she 
would not raise her eyes to mine. When 
I murmured in my sister’s ear, “ Flo, be 
kind, I will explain,” she turned her face 
away with a low order to the driver which 
set the carriage spinning towards home at 
a rate that threatened to cripple every slow- 
139 


An Eventful Night 


footed pedestrian along our track. But if 
my bride would not look at me, nor my 
sister talk. Miss Thompson did both and 
to spare. Heavens, how she scourged me 
with her merry speeches ! ‘ ‘ And to think, 

Flo, you naughty girl,’^ she cried, turning 
a vengeful glare on my poor sister, who 
writhed beneath her just attack, ‘‘that 
you passed him off upon us as a gay bache- 
lor. What if I had lost my heart ? ^ ’ And 
she glared at me, while I wondered to think 
she dared claim to own such an organ. 

I don’t suppose we were more than ten 
minutes making that drive, yet I seemed 
to grow old and grey before it ended. 
Helpless to retaliate on Miss Thompson, 
my manhood seemed to desert me, and I 
sat huddled up upon the seat like some 
poor relation out for an airing. 

At last we were at home once more. 
Some one — only the coachman, I think — 
drove off with Miss Thompson, and after 
more confusion I was standing before my 
brother-in-law, who had been telephoned 
for in great haste; with Flo showing symp- 
140 


An Eventful Night 


toms of hysterics on a sofa at hand, and 
my poor bride doubtless weeping her pretty 
eyes out in a chamber above us, whither 
she had fled without one word or backward 
glance for me. Thus standing, suspected 
by all, pitied by none, I poured out my 
strange tale for perhaps the hundredth time. 

I can see my brother-in-law now as he 
sat there, large, loose-limbed, and pros- 
perous, fllled with uneasy embarrassment 
at the irregularity of being in his own 
house during business hours, his eyes 
roaming in conjugal anxiety to where his 
wife lay, yet ever returning to me with a 
friendly light in their sharp, grey depths. 
Not a flgure to encourage romantic yarns, 
and yet I poured mine out upon him, and 
saw him shift and wince, and heard his 
muttered “By George’s” and his “Oh, 
come now, old fellow’s ” without flinching; 
and then, when I had flnished, they both 
sat and gazed at me with pale faces and 
frightened eyes, much as they might have 
looked had I been brought home to them 
spread out on a shutter. 

141 


An Eventful Night 


Never mind, Plo,” were the first words 
gasped out by poor William when I had 
ended. ‘‘George, my dear boy. I’ll see 
you through this,” and then steps came 
hurrying along the hall, and the door fell 
open to admit a servant’s fiustered face. 
But before it had fairly dawned upon us, 
it was shoved aside, and in bounded a 
small, stooped figure which I recognized 
as the lawyer I had consulted that morn- 
ing. Something exciting he had to tell; 
his face showed that, and before I could 
speak to him, he and my brother-in-law 
ran at each other and fairly exploded with 
a lot of legal jargon in which I seemed to 
figure as both “ John Doe ” and “ Eich- 
ard Eoe,” so involved had my affairs be- 
come. Then all three of them — for my 
sister had mixed herself up in the confu- 
sion — turned and looked at me: my sis- 
ter — for she loved me — with happy tears 
chasing the shadows from her eyes; my 
brother-in-law — for he loved my sister — 
with a face of profound relief; and my 
lawyer — for he loved his gold — with a 


An Eventful Night 

countenance uplifted by the vision of a 
heavy fee. 

“ Sir,” he said, ‘‘ sir, allow me to con- 
gratulate you ; you have married an heir- 
ess! ” and he grasped me with fingers pur- 
ple from the arteries of his fountain pen, 
and shook me as though rattling sover- 
eigns from a sack. 

“ By George, old fellow, you lit on your 
feet this time! ” burst forth William with 
an explosive laugh, and he gave me a blow 
upon the back which would have driven 
home a railroad spike. 

‘'Oh, George, and she’s so pretty!” 
whispered my sister, with her arms about 
my neck. “Couldn’t you — don’t you 
think vou might learn to like her just a 
little?” 

The next two weeks of my existence 
were as troubled as a sick man’s dream, 
for though scornfully indifferent to the 
wretched dollars involved in the affair, 
every one else seemed to consider them of 
the first importance, and I led a wretched 
life of it in the hands of my lawyer, who 
143 




An Eventful Night 


worked me like a day labourer with his 
everlasting interviews. And when Miss 
Brandon’s uncle and cousin (I hadn’t the 
courage to even think of her by any other 
name) turned violent and insulting, no one 
would think of letting me meet them, one 
at a time, and have it out with them. 
Those who took an interest in the tire- 
some details told me that the fantastic will 
which had made all the trouble showed up 
practically the same as it had been given 
to me; and, finally, the matter was settled 
somehow on a comparatively peaceful basis. 
The uncle denied everything, of course, 
but finally disgorged enough, I suppose, 
to satisfy those who were handling the 
business. Anyway, they ceased torment- 
ing me about it; even Dr. A , whose 

case had of course complicated my troubles, 
recovered from his miraculously trifiing in- 
juries, and I had time to fall back on the 
real source of my sufferings. 

It had its root in the unaccountable dis- 
like taken to me by the young bride fiung 
so strangely on my care. This it was 
144 


An Eventful Night 


which robbed me of my appetite, destroyed 
my pleasing manners, made me peevish 
with my sister, intolerant of the cook, pet- 
tish to a degree with the housemaid, and 
downright savage with the smirking coach- 
man, who privately considered himself a 
party to all my unwholesome notoriety. 
And how they bore with me! I wondered 
at their goodness even while I kept on 
trampling over them in my unbridled ego- 
tism. 

It must have been patent to every woman 
in the house, from my sister down to the 
meanest scrubwoman, that I was the vic- 
tim of an engrossing and despairing pas- 
sion; and so my sister ignored petty flings, 
the cook did violence to her own past rec- 
ord, the housemaid fllled my vases with 
flowers, and through all this womanly kind- 
ness I stalked untamed, dishevelled as to 
ties, solitary as to habit, a lean spectre of 
a bridegroom without a bride. 

It was apparent to every one that my 
bride had no desire for my society, and I 
was made to feel, even by Flo, that it would 
10 145 


An Eventful Night 


be considered a graceful act for me to take 
my meals down town whenever the pretty 
recluse had been prevailed upon to prom- 
ise she would leave her room. 

‘‘You see she feels so queer, you know,” 
my sister would say with an inscrutable 
smile. “And I have promised that we 
will be alone to-night”; and so I would 
rush off savagely, take a few wretched 
morsels of food somewhere, then sneak 
home again with the unacknowledged hope 
of surprising them at the table, only to be- 
hold vanishing skirts melting away behind 
some closing door. After that I would 
fling away to my room, and commence my 
daily task of packing the satchel which I 
invariably unpacked before the night was 
over. 

I fell to absenting myself from the com- 
mon haunts of man, taking long and dis- 
mal walks in the suburbs of the place, 
moody and suicidal. During one of these 
rambles it was, at a moment when my self- 
pity was at the keenest, that I came upon 
a group of men, one of whom was in police- 
146 


An Eventful Night 

man’s garb. He was directing the others 
with voice and gesture regarding a maimed 
and halting beast that hobbled in their 
rear. “ Take him to the outskirts and 
shoot him!” he bawled. ‘‘He broke a 
plate-glass window to-day racing with a 
street car,” and, with this death sentence 
warm npon his lips, he faced about to run 
full against me, as I darted towards him. 

“Stop them! Stop those men!” I 
called, and then, before his fingers could 
come groping for my collar, I explained 
more calmly: “ I know the owner of that 
horse. He will gladly pay for any damages 
that it has done, and agree to see after it 
more carefully in the future.” 

I think he thought I was demented, but 
the colour of my gold was the same as that 
of any sane man’s; so, after a decent pause 
in behalf of his official dignity, he recalled 
his vassals, and a moment later, with the 
whole crowd jeering at me, I had started 
on my homeward way, leading the wretched 
outcast. On through the sloppy road we 
went, we two who had made that dark 
147 


An Eventful Night 


night race together — he worn and spent 
in body, and I with my spirit biting the 
very dust. Long was the way, but at 
length we turned in at the door of a pub- 
lic stable, where a wondering but friendly 
hostler took the halter from me, while I 
told him my desires. 

If you don’t ’low to use him none, he 
can be pulled through all right, I guess,” 
he said doubtfully. But his legs is stiff 
as posts, and he won’t never be good for 
nothin’ much but slow travel ” ; and then, 
while he went for oats and a blanket, I 
stooped and I looked into the creature’s 
almost human eyes in dumb apology for 
the wrong my passion had done him. 
“ And it was all in vain, old nag,” I whis- 
pered, patting his hair with a lingering 
touch, for his shape was a beautiful mem- 
ory to me; and again, in fancy, I could see 
it steaming along the frozen road which 
stretched so long, so long before me, while 
a girl nestled at my side, and a peril that 
made her mine to save came rushing on 
behind. 


148 


An Eventful Night 


Distracted with memories, I hurried home 
in no mood to cope with Flo, when she 
came and gently probed and goaded me, 
until the secret of my heart came out in 
an angry confession that I loved the wife 
who would not even raise her eyes to 
mine. She gave me not a ray of hope. 
She even said, Poor boy! ” And sullen 
with despair, I flung myself from her 
presence. 

I now decided conclusively to leave the 
country. I went down to dinner envel- 
oped in a halo of resolves, having mentally 
declined every objection which the courtesy 
of a host or the affection of a relative could 
urge against my departure. I was a little 
late, but it did not matter. I opened the 
door carelessly, only to And myself stricken 
in such confusion as I had not felt since 
my flrst ball. 

It was not the teasing light from Flo’s 
smile which disconcerted me, nor yet the 
friendly encouragement which radiated 
from William’s entire person. No; some 
one else was there, some one dressed in 
149 


An Eventful Night 


shimmering white, with a blushing face, 
hut a bright and happy one — a young per- 
son whom Flo and William called Ber- 
nice ” with a familiarity positively madden- 
ing, inasmuch as I dared call her nothing 
at all. 

That dinner! How I got through it 
without stabbing mjself with the imple- 
ments of which I seemed to have forgotten 
the use, or scalding myself with the soup 
which I swallowed boiling hot, no one can 
tell. I certainly was a great care to the 
servants; they were kept busy dragging 
off the small articles I wrecked about me; 
but no one noticed my accidents. They 
were all in the highest spirits, and laughed 
at my few stuttering remarks as though I 
were the funniest creature living. 

“ But I am sorry you feel that you must 
leave us,” said Flo, when we had got back 
to the drawing-room, catching her train 
from beneath my feet as she spoke, and 
smiling upon me. ‘‘Thomas says you 
have packed up again. I wonder that you 
don’t wear out your clothing, changing it 
150 


An Eventful Night 


about so.” Then she melted from the 
room, and William, without even the de- 
cent pretext of an excuse, made haste to 
follow. 

I think my companion knew that they 
were going, Wt when we were fairly alone 
her courage failed her. A little cry es- 
caped her lips, and, had I not quickly 
placed myself before her, she, too, would 
have vanished. 

“Bernice,” I cried, and I was on my 
knees before her, “ you must help me to 
save my honour. I said that I would leave, 
but I cannot. Oh, Bernice, my little 
bride, I cannot! ” 

Had I frightened, had I shocked her? 
I dared not look up, but clasping tightly 
in my own the trembling hands which I 
caught as they wound themselves nervously 
together, I pressed them close against my 
downbent face. There was a long silence 
while the small hands struggled feebly in 
mine; then they grew still, and there came 
faintly: “I— I don’t think that I want 
you to go— but you never had any wife — 
151 


An Eventful Night 

and — ^you aren’t a doctor at all — and — 
and ” 

If there are those who would prefer to 
believe that I remained upon my knees 
through all that faltering speech they may 
do so, but I think there are many who will 
appreciate me better if they doubt that I 
was so passive. 


153 


4 


\ 





/ 


MAR 14 1900 


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